August 20, 2013: Just one week after signing 10 pieces of firearms legislation, Governor Chris Christie vetoed the two most controversial firearms bills passed by the NJ legislature: the proposed .50 caliber firearm ban and Senate President Sweeney’s “kitchen sink” bill.
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The fifty caliber gun ban, which the Governor previously supported, was vetoed in its entirety. The legislature would have to override the veto by a 2/3 vote in order for the bill to become law. In vetoing the bill, Gov. Christie criticized the bill as being excessive in scope and containing errors which conflicted with grandfathering rights. Gov. Christie also noted that the bill would have done nothing to reduce crime and would likely have served only to threaten the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
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Senate President Sweeney’s 42-page omnibus bill, dubbed the “kitchen sink,” received a conditional veto from Gov. Christie, meaning that the legislature can either accept numerous revisions to the bill by the Governor or seek to override the veto by a 2/3 vote. Given that the bill barely made it through the legislature, and, according to some accounts, only did so because of voting rules violations in the assembly (about which lawsuits have been threatened), the 2/3 override veto would be virtually impossible. As such, legislators likely will have to accept Gov. Christie’s revisions or watch the bill die, the latter of which is more likely given that Gov. Christie largely gutted the bill. For instance, Gov. Christie’s version completely deletes the portions of the statute that would have created electronic firearms ID cards and provided for firearms endorsements on driver’s licenses, and removed the provisions that would have prohibited the sale of firearms directly between licensed gun owners that have passed background checks. Among other things, Gov. Christie criticized the “kitchen sink” bill as being “shortsighted” in that it focused on gun control rather than combatting violence, which Gov. Christie said the bill completely failed to do.