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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, January 10th, 2023. It's about 1.40 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. New Jersey where I am at the moment, a federal district court judge invalidated about 90 to 95
percent of the New Jersey right to carry law, which of course was not a right to carry law at all.
This horrific piece of legislation which was written by a Democratic legislature and signed
into law by a Democratic governor, the vast majority of the legislature and the person of the governor, fierce opponents of the Second Amendment, would have barred you from carrying a gun into a supermarket, into a bar, into a restaurant, into a stadium, into a public park, and even in your car. The judge said that this was nothing but an effort to frustrate the Supreme Court's
right to carry opinion called BRUEN, B-R-U-E-N, which was written by Justice Clarence Thomas
and signed off on by the court 6-3 last June, just seven months ago. That opinion redefines the right to keep and bear arms as a
fundamental personal liberty in the same category as the freedom of speech. It even, in my opinion,
says to the states you can't require gun registration. It doesn't say this directly,
but by saying the Second Amendment does not protect Second Amendment rights, by saying that the Second Amendment does not protect second class rights, by saying that the right to keep and bear arms is in the same class as the right to the freedom of speech, the court is basically saying a government that cannot force you to
register your books cannot force you to register your guns. We're not quite there, but we are at
the point where if the government's rules and regulations appear to be an intentional frustration
of a right, not an effort to keep people safe, but an intentional frustration of a right because the
authors of the legislation, the liberal Dems in the New Jersey legislature and the crazy liberal
governor who wants to succeed Biden in the White House, Phil Murphy, if their goal is simply to
frustrate a fundamental liberty or evade and avoid the Supreme Court's interpretation of that
liberty, the courts will strike it down. This 60-page opinion by Judge Marie Bum, B-U-M-B,
severely tongue-lashes the government of the state of New Jersey for its clumsy and obvious efforts to frustrate a natural fundamental
right that the Supreme Court as recently as seven months ago redefined. We'll see where this goes.
It's a preliminary ruling. And so in other words, the challengers to the statute file
two applications. One is a complaint asking for a trial at which they will prove,
either by oral argument or by testimony, that this statute violates the Bruin opinion, which is the
definitive seven-month-old, six-to-three Supreme Court interpretation of the right to carry.
The other application is an application to prevent the
enforcement of the statute between the time of the filing and the time of the resolution of the trial.
That is based upon the judge's opinion that the case is a strong one, that the plaintiffs,
the challengers, probably will win, and that the defendant's violations of the Supreme Court
probably are there and probably can be proven. All those probabilities are preliminary judgments
that the trial judge makes. And then she decides whether or not to keep the statute in place
during the pendency of the trial, which could take six to eight months, not six to eight
months in the courtroom, but six to eight months of litigation, or to prevent the enforcement of
the statute during the six to eight months. When the plaintiff wins the probably, probably a good
case, probably a violation, probably will prevail, then judges are supposed to enjoin the statute,
and that's exactly what she did.
The governor, of course, is crowing, well, this is not permanent. It's just preliminary. We're going to appeal. Well, we'll see where it goes, how far the appeal has to go. In my opinion,
this is a sound and faithful following of the Supreme Court's opinion seven months ago.
Morris would get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.