Advocates seek to cap handgun purchases to one per month

(by Dan Prochilo - July 10, 2008)

As a schoolbus pulled up and children in swim trunks filed into the recreation center where a mother of two was shot and killed two weeks ago, gun control activists and local political leaders gathered to push for a new limit on gun sales.

Around 40 people listened as the bill’s supporters spoke at a podium set up in Crane Park, with The Helen & Bill Geyer YMCA Family Center as a backdrop. In the center on June 26, Monica Paul, 31, had been shot as she watched her 5-year-old son Noah swim in an indoor pool.

The suspect in the shooting, Kenneth Duckett, 37, of Orange, was arrested Tuesday in Brooklyn after a 12-day manhunt, police said.

Given his history, Duckett, who according to police had a rap sheet in three New Jersey counties and had spent time in prison, could not have purchased or even possessed a gun legally, said Bryan Miller, executive director of Ceasefire NJ.

Along with the Essex County Chapter of Million Mom March, a national organization dedicated to preventing gun violence, and with BlueWaveNJ, Ceasefire coordinated the pro-gun-regulation gathering in the park at noon yesterday, July 9.

Miller noted that Paul’s family, friends and community members were devastated by her heinous slaying.

"We would be remiss if we didn’t take this opportunity to move the checker forward," he said, referring to the gun-sale legislation being contemplated in Trenton.

Similarly, newly elected Mayor Jerry Fried said when gun violence "becomes personalized," as it did after the brazen killing of Paul before 50 people, including one of her own children, "it makes people realize we have the power in our hands to change the culture."

Advocates told the audience to contact state legislators and urge the passage of a bill that would limit gun buyers in New Jersey to purchasing one handgun per month, a measure backers hope would cut into the state’s illegal gun trade. At present, there is no limit on the number of handguns a consumer can buy within a given time period.

Often, illegal gun traffickers, who are unable to purchase guns legally since they have criminal records, hire "straw buyers," who are usually friends and relatives who can pass background checks, to legally buy firearms for them at retailers, Miller said. Sometimes the street dealers will even accompany their stand-ins into shops, pick out guns, and then have their surrogates make the buys, Miller said.

If enacted, this so-called "One-Handgun-A-Month Bill" would force gun traffickers, who must buy and sell in bulk to maintain a profitable business, to hire many more straw purchasers than they do now, thereby driving up both the cost and risk of doing business, Miller said.

Such a law was passed in Virginia roughly a decade ago, and as a result that state fell from being the top out-of-state source of illegally traded guns on the streets of New Jersey to fifth place, Miller said. Pennsylvania, which has more relaxed firearm laws than New Jersey, has now become the leading external source, Miller said.

Despite the influx of guns from out-of-state, 28 percent of the guns used in crimes in New Jersey made their way to the black market starting with a legal transaction at a gun shop in the Garden State.

Assemblyman Thomas Giblin, D-34, said passage of this new restriction would be "a forward step."

"It’s really respectful of the right of citizens to have arms, but the ability to purchase 12 handguns a year is more than adequate," Giblin told The Times prior to the Crane Park event.

He noted that the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights lobbying groups made phone calls and sent e-mails objecting to the proposal, but the opposition was not at all as strong as previous outcries from those organizations over other propositions.

"I interpret that as a good sign," said Giblin, a Montclair resident. "Hopefully we can have this enacted in 2008."

The bill, approved by the state General Assembly last month, is now under consideration in the Senate.

Contact Dan Prochilo at prochilo@montclairtimes.com.