Posted by The Star-Ledger Editorial Board July 22, 2009 5:32AM
Categories: Law & Order, Policy Watch
A police officer hit in the face with a shotgun blast by a robbery suspect in Jersey City.

A mother of two gunned down while standing outside her apartment house on Elizabeth Avenue in Newark.

Two men killed in a blaze of gunfire on South 12 Street in the city the same day.

Their deaths within 24 hours are another snapshot of the routine carnage committed with guns in New Jersey.

As Jersey City Officer Marc DiNardo lay in critical condition after last week's shootout, Mayor Jerramiah Healy made a personal plea to President Obama to help win passage of federal legislation to stem the flow of illegal weapons to his and other cities.

After DiNardo's death yesterday morning, Healy and others praised him as a hero -- and asked, again, why we can't reduce the number of dangerous weapons on our streets.

Healy is among more than 400 mayors around the country who belong to Mayors Against Illegal Guns, led by New York's Michael Bloomberg and Boston's Thomas Menino. They favor reasonable federal legislation that could help reduce the number of guns that start out being sold legally but end up in the hands of criminals. For example, closing the "gun show loophole" that exempts private sales at gun shows from the criminal background checks that licensed dealers must perform.

But instead of making progress, as a nation we seem to be going backwards.

The federal ban on the manufacture and sale of semiautomatic assault weapons expired almost five years ago, with little prospect Congress will extend the law. And today, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on a bill that threatens to undermine the way states and cities regulate the carrying of concealed firearms.

Sponsored by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the bill would require the 48 states that allow some people to carry concealed weapons to honor permits granted in other states, including those with much more relaxed standards. In effect, it would let people carry concealed guns into states where local laws ordinarily wouldn't allow them to do so.

New Jersey has a very tough concealed-carry law. Unless you're a law enforcement officer, an armored-car driver or a security guard, it's very difficult to obtain a carry permit in this state. Other states are less restrictive, but some require training and gun-safety courses, or deny permits to people convicted of certain misdemeanors.

Still other states are not so careful -- Alaska, for example, where anyone who is not barred from owning a gun can get a carry permit. Thune's amendment, if enacted, would allow anyone who can qualify for a permit in their home state to carry a concealed gun in New Jersey, where most residents are prohibited from doing the same.

We know there is no direct connection between someone carrying a pistol with a permit and an outlaw brandishing a stolen shotgun. Our point is that we need fewer guns on the streets, not more, and that if we in New Jersey choose to place tight limits on packing heat, those limits should not be set aside for visitors from out-of-state. Even in the fabled Old West, there were local limits on where someone could carry a gun, and some towns -- Tombstone, famously -- prohibited toting firearms within city limits.

The gun lobby -- which apparently won't be satisfied until every man, woman and child in the country is wearing a sidearm -- argues that stronger gun-control laws do not deter crime because criminals don't abide by them. But every weapon sold or possessed illegally had to come from a legal source in the first place.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns found a strong link between weak state gun laws and higher rates of murders within those states, as well as police slayings and sales of guns used in crimes in other states. Jersey City officials said the shotgun used against its officers last week was reported stolen in South Carolina, which is among the 10 states with the highest crime-gun export rates.

But facts like these seem to fall on deaf ears among those in Congress who are eager to please the National Rifle Association. And so we have the spectacle of a bill like the Thune Amendment being tacked onto an essential piece of legislation -- the Defense Authorization Act -- in hopes of forcing it into law.

New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez were joined by other prominent Democrats in pledging to defeat the amendment. Gov. Jon Corzine threatened to challenge it in the courts if it becomes law. The mayors' group -- including Healy, Newark's Cory Booker and 41 other New Jersey mayors from cities and suburbs alike -- also denounced it.

Lautenberg called it "another attempt by the gun lobby to put its radical agenda ahead of safety and security in our communities." Menendez cast the issue in terms of state rights: "Either we're going to obliterate the right of states to decide how to protect their citizens or we're going to preserve the rights of governors, mayors, police chiefs" to decide what's right for their localities, he said on MSNBC.

New Jersey and other states with strict gun laws have the right to enforce them on visitors as well as residents. We hope Lautenberg, Menendez, and common sense prevail.