More on the New Jersey Issue

Armed and Safe doesn’t like the legislation either, but mentioned one thing I wanted to talk about:

The amendments also remove language specifying that the legal owner of a lost or stolen firearm who complied with the reporting requirements would not be civilly liable for any damages resulting from a crime.

Yep–the bill initially contained language that would protect the owner from liability stemming from his being the victim of a crime, but the legislators, in their infinite wisdom, removed that provision.

That’s actually a bit we wanted them to remove. Currently there is no tort that exists for a person being held responsible for the criminal misuse of property that was stolen from them. By removing liability on the part of a gun owner who reported a lost or stolen firearm, the legislature would have been implying a tort did exist for those gun owners who failed to report a lost of stolen firearm under this statue. Therefore a gun owner in violation could not have only been fined, but also could be sued by the victims.