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After the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority revoked women’s right to an abortion, overturning a 49-year-old legal precedent, it also struck down a more-than-century-old state law that restricts the right to carry a concealed handgun in public.
Our governor just responded by signing new legislation to sharply limit where guns can be carried in New Jersey. Where you have fewer guns and stricter laws, you have fewer gun injuries and deaths, research has shown. Yet while most people are solidly on his side, the law may not withstand legal challenges. The gun lobby has vowed that it “will go down in a flaming ash heap.”
Now imagine a world where we didn’t have to struggle with this. You don’t have to look far for inspiration: There it is, just north of our border, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is almost reaching the point of banning gun sales in Canada. They have no Second Amendment, no constitutional right to gun ownership. Guns are treated the same as any other consumer good that the government can regulate.
Meanwhile, in America, we continue to bleed daily, with an average of more than 300 people shot every 24 hours, including 22 children and teens. The core rationale is that we need guns for self-defense, but what we have is a public policy in which nearly 49,000 people a year are killed by guns and nearly 400 million firearms flood our streets – more than one for every citizen.
Compare that to Japan, which has less than one gun per 100 people and rarely sees more than 10 gun deaths a year in the entire country. Then ask yourself: Why do we need this fanatical interpretation of our Second Amendment, when no other advanced country has that kind of guarantee of personal gun ownership?
— Newark Star-Ledger Editorial Board in The 2nd Amendment is a curse
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