New Jersey Handgun Laws Essay

New Jersey has decent laws for handheld firearms but they are not good enough. New Jersey is a extremely populated state. For such a small state with so many people, New Jersey needs strict firearm laws, to keep things safe. The problem of New Jersey’s unsafe handgun laws can be solved by more strict laws and tracking devices because many handguns are bought, used, sold, and transported illegally. Of all firearms, citizens abuse the laws of handguns the most. When you hear or read on the news about a homicide or robbery case, most of the time the weapon used is a handgun. They are not very hard to purchase, they can be easily concealed, they are not hard to sell and buy illegally, and they are powerful for their size. This makes the handgun the most practical weapon for a person to use even if it is for illegal use. A handgun is a gun that can be fired with one hand and usually is semi-automatic. An example of a handgun is a pistol or a revolver. Handguns laws are strict but they are not strict enough. To purchase a handgun, a permit is required. But no ID card is required, this makes it easy to fake an identity and purchase a handgun illegally. To acquire a permit you must get it through the New Jersey
State Police. A flawless background of crimes, mental health, and drug dependency and a minimal age of 21 is needed to get the permit (NRA-ILA 2). It is illegal to sell, give, transfer, assign, or otherwise dispose of, or receive, purchase, or otherwise acquire a handgun unless the purchaser, assignee, donee, receiver, or holder is licensed as a dealer under New Jersey law or has first secured a Permit to Purchase a handgun
(NRA-ILA 2). That law sounds good but still the majority of guns are sold, bought, transferred and acquired illegally. When a handgun is bought from a legal seller, with a license from the state of New Jersey, it is not registered. This means the buyers information is not recorded with the gun purchase. Since the gun is not registered, it can easily be sold, or given away illegally. If a crime is made with a handgun, which they usually are, it is hard to find the owner of the gun because it is not registered. Any citizen that meets the standards to receive a Firearms Purchaser Identification Card (FID), has no limit on how many handguns they are allowed to purchase (NRA-ILA 2). This can also lead to the illegal distribution of firearms. This is how black market handgun sellers make money and not get caught. Once a gun is bought it can be sold to several different people and nobody will know. The state has no idea about the guns where abouts and who has the gun. If a crime is committed with the handgun, the state can find the original owner, but this owner can easily say it was lost or stolen or make up another excuse. Handguns need a device that can track them down, and the state can easily find out who has them and where they are. Handguns are also the most illegally used weapon because they can easily be hid and transported illegally. In New Jersey no handgun may be delivered to any person or place unless accompanied by a trigger lock or a locked case, gun box, container or other secure faculty (NRA-ILA 2). This law does little to prevent the illegal carrying and transporting of firearms. Handguns can easily be hid illegally on a citizen in public without anyone noticing.
This leads to a lot of crime, especially in a state like New Jersey. To carry a handgun you must also have a Permit to Carry, but even if you have a Permit to Carry and you are caught carrying the handgun you need a good reason to be carrying the gun. You can not be just carrying the gun with no purpose. If handguns were only carried by police officers and other state and federal officers many crimes could be avoided, but hunters and hobbyists have good sound reasons for wanting to own a gun. And although it is unnecessary for any citizen to carry a handgun in public, people still do it. Still, there are many ways to stop the illegal use of handguns. Civilians could only have handguns for collection/hobby purposes, exhibition or firing range shooting, or for household protection. If guns were bought for those reasons only (of course), many problems could be avoided. Handguns are collected as a hobby.
They are bought by civilians for collecting just as a child would buy baseball cards to collect, it’s a hobby. This is perfectly fine. Handguns purchased just for novelty and just to be shot properly at a firing range are also perfectly fine. Also, a handgun kept in a safe place in a house, to keep as protection only when a trespasser or intruder enters the house or property with means of harm, is also ok. If handguns were purchased just for those reasons and used properly and legally, the gun laws and guns themselves wouldn’t have to be altered, but many people abuse the laws and harm people and this makes it harder for a person who is completely innocent to buy a gun just for a
hobby. To help eliminate the illegal use of handguns, every hand gun should be registered. Every single gun purchased in New Jersey should have to be recorded in a data base in the state. Every time a gun is purchased from a legal seller. It should be the seller’s job to enter every bit of information: A buyer’s permit card, their driver’s license, their personal information (like date of birth, social security number, full name, race, gender, height and weight), the model and brand of the gun purchased, and the ammo (if purchased) that was purchased with it. This information can be entered into a computer in only a few minutes. Those few minutes can help a lot if a gun is illegally used and a crime is needing to be solved. The state would be able to look up the registration easily on a computer. It should be a mandatory law that a legal seller must enter that information, and the buyer must give that information or they will not receive the handgun. Global Positioning System Technology is a procedure in which a micro chip would be inserted into a gun purchased and then signals by satellite are sent to the state when the handgun is being fired. If the state is notified every time the gun is fired, police would be able to track down the criminals faster. This would make it harder to escape from the police if a crime is being committed with the handgun, and the gun would be able to be controlled by the state. If the state sees that the gun is being fired in a location it shouldn’t be fired in, the state would have the ability to secure the gun by locking it so it can not fire any more. This would help many crimes become less intense and make the enemy weaker because they are without a gun. If a gun is being fired in a firing range it wouldn’t be locked because the software will be able to tell if the gun is in a legal firing area. This Global Positioning System Technology would easily decrease the amount of handguns used in crimes. Criminals would be less likely to use the gun for illegal purposes knowing they would be tracked down. The guns every location move would come up on the satellite screen so it can be seen by state officers. This, plus added laws and stricter registrations would make it easier for police to track down criminals and the weapons they are purchasing and using. New Jersey has strict gun laws, but crimes with handguns still happen everyday. Innocent people are hurt by handguns that are used illegally. With these added laws and new technology, New Jersey’s handgun laws can become a lot better. People all over New Jersey will become safer and be less scared of criminals out and about. Handgun collectors and hobby shooters will be able to use their guns without inconvenience. Many people would benefit with these new strict laws. New Jersey’s unsafe gun laws can be solved by the adding of Global Positioning System, micro chips, firing technology, stricter laws and a harder and lengthier registration process. It will do a lot to lessen the illegal use, selling, purchasing, and transporting of handguns.