Vin Suprynowicz

SPECIAL TO THE SHOTGUN NEWS

Back on Nov. 15, “Reason” magazine headlined their story, by senior editor Radley Balko, “New Jersey man gets seven years for being a responsible gun owner.”

Sounds a bit far-fetched — unless you’ve ever had dealings with the anti-gun madness in some of our coastal states, where illegal alien gang members carry with impunity, while honest citizens trying to keep up with a dizzying rat’s nest of laws find “zero tolerance.”

Brian Aitken, 26, was born and raised in New Jersey, but moved to Colorado several years ago. He had no criminal record.

In Colorado he married his now ex-wife, also originally from New Jersey. The two had a son. When the marriage broke up, Atiken’s wife and infant son moved back east. Aitken eventually decided to move back as well, in order to be closer to his son. Beginning in late 2008, he took the first of several back-and-forth trips as he sold his house in Colorado, moved his possessions across the country, found a job and a new place to live. Until he could find a new apartment, he stored his belongings at his parents’ home in Burlington County.

“In December 2008 Aitken made a final trip back to Colorado to collect the last of his possessions, including the three handguns he had legally purchased in Colorado — transactions that required him to pass a federal background check,” Balko of Reason reports.

“Aitken and his friend Michael Torries had found an apartment in Hoboken, and Torries accompanied Aitken to Colorado to help with the last leg of the move. According to testimony Torries later gave at Aitken’s trial, before leaving Colorado Aitken researched and printed out New Jersey and federal gun laws to be sure he moved his firearms legally. Richard Gilbert, Aitken’s trial attorney, says Aitken also called the New Jersey State Police to get advice on how to legally transport his guns, although Burlington County Superior Court Judge James Morley didn’t allow” the jury to hear testimony about that phone call at Aitken’s trial.

The trouble began in January 2009, when Aitken drove to his parents’ house to pick up some belongings. He’d grown distraught over tensions with his ex-wife, who according to Aitken had been refusing to let him see his son. His mother, Sue Aitken, grew worried about his mental state.

In an interview with a New Jersey radio program, she said she works with children who have mental health problems, and she’s always been taught to call police as a precaution when someone appears despondent and shows any sign that he might harm himself.

I bet she won’t be doing that anymore.

“Concerned about her son, she called 911 but then thought better of it and hung up,” according to the magazine. “The police responded anyway. When they arrived at her home, Sue Aitken told them her concerns and the police called Brian Aitken on his cell phone. They asked him to turn around and come back to his parents’ house. He complied.

“Although they determined he wasn’t a threat to himself or anyone else, they searched his car, where they found his handguns. They were locked, unloaded, and stored in the trunk, as federal and New Jersey law require for guns in transport. The police arrested Aitken anyway, charging him with unlawful possession of a weapon.”

In New Jersey, the tedious process necessary to obtain a “purchaser’s permit” still doesn’t actually entitle you to possess a gun. “A few select groups of people, mostly off-duty police officers and security personnel, can obtain carry permits,” the magazine reports. “But anyone else with a gun is presumed to be violating state law and must defend against the charge of illegal gun possession by claiming one of the state’s exemptions.”

The exemptions allow New Jersey residents to have guns in their homes, while hunting or at a shooting range, while traveling to or from hunting grounds or a shooting range, and when traveling between residences. Brian Aitken claimed he was indeed moving between residences. Sue Aitken testified that her son was moving his belongings from her house to his. So did Aitken’s roommate. One of the police officers at the scene testified that Aitken’s car was filled with personal belongings.

Yet Superior Court Judge Morley wouldn’t allow Aitken to claim the exemption for transporting guns between residences. He wouldn’t even let the jury know about it. During deliberations, Balko reports, the jurors asked three times about exceptions to the law, “which suggests they weren’t comfortable convicting Aitken.” Morley refused to answer them all three times.

Gilbert and Evan Nappen, Aitken’s lawyers, point out their client should also have been protected by a federal law that forbids states from prosecuting gun owners who are transporting guns between residences. But Judge Morley wouldn’t let Aitken cite that provision, either.

In a telephone interview, former Judge Morley (who lost his job when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declined to reappoint him in June because of his rulings in unrelated cases) told Balko he didn’t allow the jury to consider the moving exception because “it wasn’t relevant. … He was trying to argue that the law should give him this broad window extending over several weeks to justify driving around with guns in his car.”

Without any information about the exception, the far-from-fully-informed jury did what anyone would have expected. In New Jersey, possession of a firearm without a permit is a felony, punishable by 5 to 10 years in prison. Last August, Aitken was convicted and sentenced to seven.

“New Jersey gun laws are insane,” says attorney Nappen. “It makes a criminal of every gun owner and forces him to prove his innocence.” Worse, in 2008 the New Jersey legislature and then-Gov. John Corzine changed the law to make the penalty for POSSESSING a gun the same as the penalty for using a gun to commit a separate FELONY.

On the bright side, it appears national publicity sometimes does help, especially when it makes the political class and their black-robed monkeys look like a bunch of kitten-killers.

For as it turns out, the story wasn’t over. On Dec. 21 — four days before Christmas — I was happy to receive a press release from the National Rifle Association “praising New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for commuting the prison sentence of Brian Aitken — a gun owner who was arrested, convicted and imprisoned for illegal possession of firearms, even though he had made every effort to comply with New Jersey’s restrictive and confusing laws.”

“On behalf of the 4 million members of the National Rifle Association of America, I would like to thank Governor Christie for freeing Brian Aitken in time to spend the holiday with his family,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. “Brian Aitken’s case is just one example of how New Jersey’s ridiculous gun laws turn law-abiding gun owners into criminals,” Cox added.

Indeed, as Radley Balko said at the conclusion of his piece in “Reason”:

“Putting Brian Aitken in prison isn’t going to make New Jersey any safer. It might, however, make some of the state’s residents think twice before calling the police, particularly if they own guns. It might even make some New Jersey gun owners wonder if they have more to fear from the state’s ridiculous laws and overly aggressive cops and prosecutors than they do from criminals.”

A commuted sentence is not, so far as I know, the same as a full pardon. While we can be happy Brian Aitken is a free man, I suspect he’ll have trouble ever legally owning a self-defense weapon again, whether it be to defend himself, his parents — or even his infant son.

What I don’t understand is … why.