New Jersey’s state Senate passed a bill on Thursday to roll back a mandate requiring that only “personalized” handguns be sold in the state after such handguns become commercially available. The bill now heads to the state Assembly.
The Garden State’s so-called “smart gun” law—sold as the “Childproof Handgun Law”—has been plagued with problems since it was passed in 2002. First of all, handguns designed specifically not to function pose potentially lethal hazards when relied upon for self-defense—which is why the law specifically exempted police. On a more practical level, New Jersey’s attorney general admitted that so-called “personalized handguns”—meaning handguns that cannot be fired by anyone except authorized users—do not yet exist.
Regardless of the fate of this measure, one thing is certain: Decisions about what type of firearm to choose for self-protection should be left to consumers, not bureaucrats and their one-size-fits-all mandates.
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