Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Christie's Commutation Yes--But....

A bunch of useful information here.

...Both the anti-gun left and the pro-gun right seem to believe that Aitken’s commutation was a shrewdly calculated move to win favor for the governor in Southern and Western states in the event that he jumps into the 2012 Republican presidential primaries.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Governor Christie commuted Aitken’s sentence because of procedural errors on the part of the trial judge, James Morley. (Some would argue incompetence, or even malice.)

Reports on the trial substantiate this contention; it was a Court of Star Chamber redux.

Now for the meat of the Christie matter:

...Christie’s stance on firearms is as draconian as that of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The simple fact of the matter is that if Christie’s views on firearms were widely known, his chances of capturing the 2012 Republican primaries would go up in smoke.

[In his 1995 Assembly campaign], Christie’s campaign dishonestly referred to the semiautomatic firearms barred under the Clinton administration’s “crime bill” as “automatic assault weapons,” intentionally misrepresenting hunting, plinking, defense, and target rifles as military machine guns.

...As of 2009, Christie still supports the ban on semi-automatic rifles in New Jersey, and when he decided to run for governor, he chose to campaign to the left of Democrat John Corzine on gun-related issues.

"Left of Carzine" means at the edge of sanity.

...As his campaign plainly stated, “Chris Christie supports the assault weapons ban and all current gun laws. He opposes attempts to permit conceal and carry laws in New Jersey...

But he's still a lot of fun to watch when he takes on the teachers. Fortunately for him, few of them are armed.

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