New Jersey Coalition for Self Defense

NCJSD testimony submitted to the Task Force created by Executive Order 145 arising from the One Gun A Month law.

Prosecutor Robert Bernardi (Chair)
Senator Fred Madden (Vice Chair)
Senator Sandra B. Cunningham
Assemblyman John Burzichelli
Assemblyman Gorden Johnson
Assistant Attorney General Ronald Susswein
LTC Chris Andreychak, NJ State Police
Robert Nixon, representative from ANJRPC
Bryan Miller, representative from Cease Fire NJ

Ladies and gentlemen of the Task Force, my name is Robert Barush, I am the Director of Legislative Affairs for the New Jersey Coalition for Self Defense. We are a volunteer, not-for-profit organization. Our objective is to save lives and make communities safer, by teaching, training and inspiring New Jersey Citizens to develop for themselves the means of proper self defense.

Our position is that our laws can be crafted to hold criminals accountable for their actions while protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens to have access to the tools necessary to defend themselves.

We are pleased to have the opportunity to be here today to discuss the much needed changes to the “one-handgun-a-month law” and other related legislative issues.

Let me first start by saying that there are many issues that the members of NJCSD have asked us to address today. Since we can’t possibly cover them all, and considering that this hearing is primarily about “one-handgun-a-month” (OGAM), we have compiled a separate list of issues which we ask the Taskforce to address as part of your review of New Jersey firearms laws and regulatory processes and to include us in the discussion of each, as we feel we have a lot to offer.

Today we will cover our specific concerns and suggestions regarding OGAM, and provide a general statement that we wish to make on behalf of our members. We see this as the first step of a process of communication and understanding of the elements of each issue and hope that our perspective might begin to put the ‘sense’ back into ‘common sense’ gun laws.

Representatives of the New Jersey Coalition for Self Defense will attend a public meeting of the New Jersey Firearms Task Force on Thursday, September 24 at 11:00 AM. The meeting will take place in Committee Room 4 at the State House Annex, 145 West State Street, Trenton.

Speaking on behalf of NJCSD will be Robert Barush, Director of Legislative Affairs. The list of spokespeople also includes NRA Board Member Scott Bach, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, Competitive Shooter Kathy Chatterton, and Attorneys Evan Nappen and Gary Needleman. 

For more information, including directions, please see our related forum topic.

Now that One-Gun-a-Month (OGAM) has been passed, the next step was to be the assembly of a task force to oversee any changes needed to the new directive, which will take effect in January of 2010.

We previously reported on the response we received from the Governor’s office regarding the task force, and since then it seems that not a lot has changed as far as the nature of the dealings of this secret society of rights-fighters.

One of NJCSD’s members took upon himself to follow the progress of the Governor’s OGAM Task Force, and last week contacted Senator Fred Madden’s office for information. According to Senator Madden’s office, the task force has been named, and they’ve already met twice - on July 27 and August 10. Members, according to Senator Madden’s office, are:

Senator Fred Madden (D)
Senator Sandra B. Cunningham (D)
Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D)
Assemblyman Gorden Johnson (D)
An unnamed representative from the Attorney General’s Office
An unnamed representative from the State Police
A representative from ANJRPC (Rob Nixon)
An unnamed representative from Cease Fire NJ
An unnamed representative from the Prosecutors Association

Talking to Governor Corzine’s office, however, it’s a different story.

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