Firearms violence

Police in New Jersey talk about impact on public safety

By: Steve Janoski
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... The date is seared into Colonial Patrick Callahan's memory - April 12, 1995.
..... Not only because it was his first day with the New Jersey State police, the agency he now leads, But because it was the first time he witnessed the bloody havoc guns can create.
..... It started as a road rage argument between two men driving on Route 78 in Hunterdon County, Callahan recalled in an interview last week. [06/29/2022] they pulled off the road to settle their differences. But one had just left the shotting range and had in his trunk a legally purchased .45-caliber handgun.
..... The fight escalated. And the man with the gun - who later told Callahan he was a trained marksman - walked to the rear of his car, speed-loaded his pistol and shot the other in the abdomen.
..... The incident, which Callahan first relayed at a news conference later last Month [06/2022] left the state police superintendent eternally wary of freely wielded firearms.
..... "I always thought, what if that motorist who fired that shot didn't have access to that weapon?" Callahan said. "It probably would have ended with a few hand gestures and off they would have went. But that wasn't the case. The fact that a weapon was involved is what changes people's behavior and has them ... willing to take somebody's life over being cut off."
..... Three weeks ago, Callahan and other New Jersey police chiefs could effectively decide who received a permit to carry a handgun and who didn't. But that changed suddenly on June 23 [2022] when the United States Supreme Court unilaterally loosened carry restrictions throughout the nation by overturning a longstanding New York gunlaw. And it sent police in the Garden State scrambling to adapt to a new reality, one in which every resident could potentially be carrying a legal firearm.
..... State officials , police chiefs and rank-and-file officers were skeptical of the ruling which broadly struck down a New York law that let local licensing officials refuse a carry permit application if the applicant couldn't show a special need for self-protection. But they remain divided on how the high court's decision will affect state whose residents are not accustomed to seeing a gun strapped to the hip of anyone who is not a member of law enforcement.
..... Those who supported New Jersey's now-eliminated "justifiable need" requirement to carry a firearm say the court;s move means more people will carry weapons on the street. That could be dangerous in the nation's most densely populated states, they say. and it could cause spur-of-the-moment quarrels such as bar fights or road rage to turn deadly, when they wouldn't have before.
..... "When you increase the number of people carrying guns, you increase the likelihood that guns are used when confrontation occur," acting New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Plakin said in an interview. "There's no data that supports the argument that it doesn't - the state that have higher rates of concealed carry have higher rates of gun violence. To me it's pretty clear."
..... Others are less convinced.
..... Chief Keith Germain, the leader of the Barnegat Police Department and public affairs for the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police, said most other states function as "shall-issue" states, which means they issue a carry permit if the applicant meets a basic set of legal requirements.
..... But gun-battles do not regularly erupt in these areas, Germain said. He also noted that many officers support the Second Amendment and carry a firearm when off-duty themselves.
..... Still, Germain admitted that officers must get used to seeing more legal guns in the hands of the citizenry.
..... "Do I think it's going to turn into Armageddon? Absolutely not," Germain said. "But clearly, it's going to be a big adjustment, because most of the calls we're used to going on - a lot of them are now going to have a firearm introduced besides our own."
..... One Passaic County detective, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, said he liked New Jersey's formally restrictive carry laws because they made it "very simple to tell who's the cop and who's the bad guy."
..... But the officer also said he doesn't believe losser carry laws will lead to more violence.
..... "If the bad guys know that the average person can have a gun, they might be less likely to do some dumb [expletive]," the officer said.
..... Many New Jersey law enforcement officers - prono-carry zones and strict training mandates for civilians.
..... "We're hoping the state will train people in how to react to incidents - we don't want them getting involved unless it's an absolute last resort," said Pat Collign, head of the New Jersey State Policemen's Benevolent Association. "We have to be careful. A lot more people are going to be carrying a gun than we're used to. We have to be vigilant and patient."

Inconclusive data

..... Gun rights have often echoed such sentiments with pithy phrases like "An armed society is a polite society" and "More guns, less crime."
..... But that's never been proved true. Years of studies - and studies of those studies - have not shown a conclusive link between the strictness of a state's concealed carry laws and how much crime occurs there.
..... Some reports concluded that right-to-carry laws led to decreases in violent crime, murders, rapes and assaults. Others found no effect at all, while still others identifies inverse in firearms homicides and other categories.
...... In 2004, the National research Council assembled a panel to review the available scientific studies and reanalyze the data. But it could not reach a concrete verdict.
..... "The evidence to date does not adequately indicate either the sign or the magnitude of a causal link between the passage of right-of-carry laws and crime rate," the panel wrote.
..... A 2018 research review conducted by the Rand Corporation's gun Policy in America initiative found similarly hazy results.
..... Shall-issue polices may increase violent crime, according to Rand, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. But evidence for the relationship is limited, and the review could not determine the effect of shall-issue laws on other crimes such as homicides, Assaults, rapes and robberies.
..... The review noted that violence could rise because more people with guns might mean more people will use them during spontaneous arguments, as the state attorney general fears. But it also said concealed carry laws could lead to reduction in the severity of violent crime, because the prospect of encountering armed civilians could deter criminals and mass shooters.
..... Of course, that might also encourage criminals to arm themselves as well, the view said.

'We're seeing so many firearms'

..... Even if it's not clear whether general crime rates rise or fall, few will deny that introducing a firearm into a heated argument can have catastrophic consequences.
..... Throughout the nation, road rage incidence regularly lead to shootings that otherwise might have been averted.
..... For instance, 54-year-old King Hua died near Philadelphia on June 29 [2022] after Saddiq Washington, 22, allegedly shot him because Hua was driving too slowly, police said. Washington had a concealed weapon permit and had brought the gun legally.
..... In Tennessee, a man was taken to the hospital last week [07/06/2022] after a passenger in another vehicle allegedly shot him during another road rage incident, A Nashville television station reported.
..... In Georgia, 61-year-old Wade McEwan allegedly shot at 25-year-old Jason Daxon more than a dozen times on June 30 [2022] because Daxon was trying to pass him on the road, police said. Two bullets hit Daxon, leaving him hospitalized with critical injuries.
..... Adm in Washington, D.C., a 45-eayr-old father of two who worked as a landscaper died June 25 [2022] after another driver reportedly shot him because his crew blew grass clippings onto the shooter's car.
..... "They guy shot ... the driver of the landscaping truck because there was a gun introduced into the situation," D.C. Chief of Police Robert Contee told a local NBC affiliate afterward. "T Hat just blows my mine, the fact that we are, in our communities - we're seeing so many firearms."
..... Last year [2021] was one of the deadliest years on record for the United States, according to a report from Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy organization.
..... Gun homicides and non-suicide-related shootings killed about 20,700 people in 2021, the report said. That's a 6% increase from 2020, which itself had a significant leap from prior year. [2019]
..... About 500 people were shot and wounded or killed in more than 7000 road rage incidents last year, [2021] the report said. That's about 44 people every month, or one every 17 hours.
..... This worries Elmwood Park Police Chief Michael Foligno.
..... "Is every road rage situation going to turn violent now?" Foligno asked. "It's going to have the potential to because theres; weapons involved. What are we doing here? This is a bad thing for law enforcement, and there's going to be a lot of bumps in the road,"
..... And it's probably not over yet. the supreme court's decision has also opened the door to challenging many other gun laws that might not fit into the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation, as the court has declared they must.
..... This includes New Jersey's assault weapons ban, which is already under siege from a pair of lawsuits that say it is now unconstitutional.
..... Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat who has pushed through several gun control packages during his tenure, reacted last week [07/05/2022] by signing into law into law these regulations ban .50-caliber rifles, crack down on ghost gun manufacturers, require firearms training and mandate micro-stamping on bullets.
..... They are commonsense. They are smart," Murphy said at the signing. "They live up to our Jersey vales."
..... And the recent massacre at an elementary school in Uvaled, Texas - which left 19 schoolchildren and two teachers dead - prompted Congress to pass gun legislation for the first time in three decades.
..... The bill, signed by President Joe Biden on June 25, [2022] boosted mental health funding, enhanced background checks and closes a loophole that let some domestic abusers buy firearms.
..... Still, none of it makes up for the supreme Court's decision to gut the "justifiable need" requirement, which Platkin called the :single biggest limiting factor we had in terms of how many people had concealed carry permits in New Jersey."
..... "Until the legislature and the governors pass a new law, you're likely to see a significant increase in people carrying firearms," Platkin said. "And I think we're going to see an increase in people suing firearms. People are carrying firearms for a reason.

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