Christie pardons Marine over gun charge

On the eve of his presidential campaign, New Jersey governor Chris Christie promised that he would create a commission to look at whether the state’s gun laws were constitutional. A day after he signed an executive order announcing the commission, Christie officially declared his candidacy for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

Matt Katz is a reporter for New Jersey Public Radio/WNYC covering state politics.

Christie’s admission, during an interview on Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show, was in response to a Politico New Jersey report last week that Christie never formally asked for his state’s Department of Human Services to refuse refugees.

The commission concluded that, “statutory requirements … are being applied unevenly across New Jersey townships”. The panel’s recommendations “run directly contrary to the wishes of the overwhelming majority of New Jerseyans, but since he virtually moved out of the state months ago, Christie cares not what Garden Staters want”, Miller said. A 2014 legal memorandum from the state Attorney General’s Office encouraged county prosecutors to divert offenders like Velez to pre-trial intervention programs – which do not involve jail time – in cases where the unlawful gun possession was an isolated event that posed minimal danger to New Jersey residents, among other factors.

“I’m not taking it off”, Hogan said Christie told him, “you’ll have to come to New Hampshire and cut it off”.

Nor did the commission’s recommendations appeal to Second Amendment enthusiasts, who bristled at the notion that carry permits need to exist at all, rather than loosen the definition of “justifiable need”.

Under this standard, the report said, “very few applications are granted, and many people are likely discouraged to obtain a permit because the standard is so high”.

He also explains the secrecy behind the three-person commission, the members of which were only recently identified as two people who worked for the governor and the vice dean of Seton Hall Law School. Instead, the report lays out administrative changes that could be made.

Christie’s office says the gun was legally purchased and Marine recruiter is licensed to carry it in MA.