In yesterday’s NJ.com/Star-Ledger column, Jersey Democrats’ gun-control bill is shot full of holes, Paul Mulshine reports on his conversation he had with Assemblyman Joe Danielsen regarding his bill restricting the locations where a handgun be carried. The conversation followed a debate on the bill in the Assembly Appropriations Committee in which Assemblyman Brian Bergen expressed concern about the extensive list of locations where the carrying of a handgun would be a crime and repeatedly asked Danielsen just where a handgun could be carried, with Bergen asking if an entry into private property to pick up dog poop while carrying a handgun could lead to a conviction and extensive jail term. In the conversation with Mulshine that followed, Danielsen said that he said he would expect police to use their discretion before arresting someone for technical violations of the law.
A vague law is not made less vague just because a police officer may choose to overlook some of its more unreasonable potential applications. The law should be clear, and a person is entitled to be able to know what is, and what is not, lawful. A person should not have to depend upon a police officer’s “discretion” to avoid prosecution for what should never have been illegal in the first place, and a police officer should not have discretion to ignore criminal actions because the officer deems the law unreasonable in its application.
The 1780 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts provided for separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the Commonwealth “to the end it may be a government of laws, and not of men.”
Jay Bohn
October 24, 2022