By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
State Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney said Monday in Princeton that senators would vote next week to try and override a veto of what he called “common sense” gun safety legislation that presidential hopeful Gov. Chris Christie opposed to placate conservative voters.
The failed measure would have required anyone seeking to get a gun permit to notify local law enforcement if they are trying to have their mental health records expunged. In doing so, that would enable police to provide a judge, who makes that expungement decision, with that person’s criminal history or other information beforehand.
At a press conference in Hinds Plaza, Mr. Sweeney, (D-3) said the override vote would take place Oct.22, and that senators would have to be present and vote, even it takes state police to track them down and bring them to the chamber.
“At some point, you got to stand. You got to stand for the people and not for the governor of this state,” said Mr. Sweeney, the top Democrat in the 40-member Senate. “This is a mental health issue, it’s a gun safety issue. And we are not going to walk away from this.”
Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts had no comment Monday on the “override threat.”
As the head of the Senate, Mr. Sweeney said that the senate would vote to put the chamber under “call” and that “we’ll go get” any senator who fails to show up.
“You’re not going to run, you’re not going to hide,” he said in expecting to get 40 senators to vote for overriding the veto. “Would you want to be one of the senators that had to have the state police come get you? I don’t think so.”
Mr. Sweeney was joined by other Democratic lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly and area clergy, who spoke in favor the legislation.
“We can no longer sit idly by as mass shootings escalate across the United States,” said the Rev. Bob Moore, executive director of the Coalition for Peace Action. He said the Senate should override the governor’s “unconscionable veto.”
State Sen. Fred H. Madden Jr. (D-4), the prime sponsor of the legislation, said that last summer, the Administrative Office of the Courts approached him and asked him to take a “leadership role” on the bill. Citing his past career for 28 years as a New Jersey State Trooper, he explained that people are denied the right to buy a firearm if they appear in mental health data bases.
At the moment, law enforcement is not contacted when someone is trying to get his or her name removed from the data base.
The measure closing that loophole had bi-partisan and unanimous support among lawmakers in both chambers, although some Senate Republicans have backed away. Republican State Sen. Kip Batemen (R-16) is a co-sponsor of the bill, but he did not vote when the state Senate tried to override the governor’s veto the first time last month.
Mr. Bateman was travelling and unavailable for comment.
“What we need to do as a Senate body is to stand strong,” Mr. Madden said.
Lawmakers charged that the governor vetoed the measure because of his presidential aspirations.
“This vote should not be about Iowa or New Hampshire,” said state Assemblywoman Liz Muoio, (D-15), in reference to the early primary voting states in the presidential contest.
Mr. Sweeney said GOP lawmakers are “hiding from their votes because the governor has decided this isn’t good in Iowa and it’s not good in New Hampshire for his conservatives.”
Mr. Christie’s presidential campaign office directed questions to Mr. Roberts.
“I cannot endorse a continued path of patchwork proposals and fragmented statutes that add further confusion to an already cumbersome area of law. Instead, we must seek real reform. It is our responsibility to enact a comprehensive set of solutions that build safer communities and ensure that individuals with mental illness get the treatment they need,” the governor wrote in his conditional veto of the legislation.
At the press conference, lawmakers touched on the rash of school and college campus shootings going on around the country. Asked about having armed security guards on college campuses and schools, Mr. Sweeney said there are “conversations” about campus security.
Mayor Liz Lempert said earlier that the “gun violence in this country has become completely out of hand.”
“It’s something that we have to get a handle on for ourselves, for our children and for our country,” she said.
