TRENTON - While some activists will gather this weekend to commemorate the loss of American lives in Iraq after three years of war, others in New Jersey will focus on violence here.
Members of the Million Mom March and Ceasefire NJ will hold a rally in Trenton tomorrow to drum home the message that while New Jersey has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the nation, shooting deaths in its major cities surged last year.
Activists say many of the weapons come from out of state, including Pennsylvania. The rally will end with a march across the "Trenton Makes, The World Takes" bridge to Morrisville in Bucks County.
"We think that it's entirely appropriate that this rally and march will be across a bridge between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, because it's across such bridges that guns come into our state that devastate our communities," said Bryan Miller, director of Ceasefire NJ. "It's an easy trip across the river."
In recent years, Congress has restricted the details on gun tracing that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives may share with the public. Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D., Mercer), a prosecutor in Trenton Municipal Court, has introduced legislation that would require the New Jersey attorney general to begin compiling that data.
A related bill by Assemblyman Richard Merkt (R., Morris) cites 1992-98 federal figures indicating that 80 percent of guns confiscated in crimes in the Garden State had been smuggled in from other states.
Of the 252 guns that could be traced to their original point of sale after being used in Camden County crimes in 2003-04, 36 percent came from Pennsylvania, prosecutors said. About 14 percent came from the Garden State, with the balance coming from the Carolinas, Florida, Virginia and Georgia.
“The federal government has abdicated its responsibility in guns coming up through the border,” Gusciora said yesterday. “New Jersey should at least track to find out which states these guns are coming from.”
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman with the National Rifle Association, said that although he had not seen Gusciora’s legislation, efforts to focus on legal gun purchases were misplaced.
“A vast majority of firearms used in crime are obtained in the black market,” Arulanandam said. “The key is to strictly prosecute anyone who breaks the law, especially firearms law. If there’s anyone involved in illegal gun trade, prosecute them.”
But Attorney General Zulima Farber’s office said tracing gun origins was an important public-policy effort. To that end, Farber said in an interview this week, state police have begun an initiative in Camden to intensify investigations at crime scenes where a gun has been used.
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