The worst of it, if you ask me, is that they are written in a very vague manner, and clear cut yes/no answers are almost impossible to come by. Unlike California, which will at least tell you "yes you can use a monsterman grip" "yes that is a magazine lock" NJ simply does not tell you, the law abiding citizen, how to comply with their laws.
Well actually California does not tend to tell you these things, they come about after lawsuits and challenges force courts to make decisions. People well versed on the law then do the legal action after a lawsuit and a higher decision has made the law clearer.
If anyone has a problem with it they go to court and lose on an already clarified issue.
Finally prosecutors realize they cannot win prosecutions on what has been determined legal, and even if they do it will be overturned on appeal.
So they stop wasting their time.
LEO departments issue memos or tell officers something is legal if officers falsely arresting or charging people for something legal is an issue.
People then get on line and tell you the law. They cite court cases, case law, and LEO and legal experts all agree it is the law. Occasionally the Attorney General will come out and list some things that are and are not legal, but not always.
Sometimes there is a FAQ about the law listing what the writer currently sees as the law based on all these things.
But the law is interpretations, with new interpretations (case law), and so the law in reality is just the most strongly enforced and recent opinion. New opinions come about, and courts try not to reverse previous opinions, while further clarifying them.
Law in the end is really just opinion. A lot of legal processes and legal minds arguing and using previous legal decisions (yet more opinions) to support current legal opinions. With others reviewing and deciding if their opinion is consistent with previous opinions.
Nobody really thinks of the law that way, but that is really all it is, an opinion. That does not mean you can just have a contrary opinion, and do as you wish, it doesn't work that way, but if you know the game and have the funds and fight the good fight you can obtain new opinions.
California about 37 million people, and some very strong gun rights activists and rural areas where guns are very common place and more normal than not having one. They may be outnumbered, but they are still large combined and powerful and get legislation clarified. Once it is clarified these "opinions" as I explained earlier are rock solid and are in fact the law once everyone respects them as such and know a court will say so, and it will cost someone who feels otherwise extensive funds when they are sued.
But I say this because:
Unlike California, which will at least tell you "yes you can use a monsterman grip" "yes that is a magazine lock" NJ simply does not tell you, the law abiding citizen, how to comply with their laws.
It did not start out that way. All California law said was that certain features on a firearm with a detachable magazine were illegal.
Then through a lot of trial and error the situation progressed to defining what a detachable magazine was and was not, since most firearms with a fixed magazine can have the magazine removed. Take a tube fed gun with a fixed magazine (like many shotguns), you can still remove the tube, you just have to unscrew it. So technically it is "detachable". You could even design one that lets you load the tube and then screw it on, and have multiple loaded tubes.
There is many other examples, where what you may think is clear is really not clear enough initially for legal enforcement, and needs to be defined more specifically by law to be easily enforced and understood.
As a result a "fixed magazine" became one that requires a "tool" to remove. That was the clarification, no further.
Well that would seem rather simple right? A tool? You would probably think of a screwdriver, or a wrench, or some other item right? But that is not the definition of a "tool".
So some yahoo decided that anything can be a "tool" including a bullet! And just made a magazine with a release that could not be pressed with a finger, and thus requires you grab hold of some other object, and use it. Thus you used it as a "tool" to press it!
Thus it is a tool, meeting the technical definition.
Over time more and more people began to do this. Because it fit the legal definition. But nobody said it was legal, people just knew it was.
Then eventually so many people were doing it that the CADOJ, legal experts, etc did say it does meets the definition.
But there was always those who pioneered, who knew what the law was (which as I explained is opinions!) and were able to meet the letter and spirit of the law while still finding a solution that was appealing to them.
They did it slowly enough, and eventually had enough other people doing it too before they made a lot of noise, and that insured they were not alone by the time the issue was addressed. It consisted of many people doing what the law said (meaning there was a large group of people to legally challenge who were technically within the law.)
So it is my long way of saying, you could have the exact same thing in New Jersey, you simply don't because you and similar people do not want to. You may not have enough people to get the laws you want, but you most certainly have enough to get specific clarification through lawsuits and case law. And then to have people sued who violate that case law so they stop violating it from then on and know a lawsuit is coming if they do.
It takes dedication, money, and if you want really good results some good legal minds on your side looking at all the angles.
California is simply huge, with about 37 million and statewide preemption on firearm laws, there is enough people to make anything happen if just .1% choose to do something. You still have 37,000 people making it happen. Get just over 1% actively involved and you have half a million people fighting with you.
The County of Los Angeles alone for example has more people than 42 US states have people in the entire state.
It may be thought of as an anti-gun state, and in many ways it is, but it still has a larger number of pro-gun people in it than in most other states.
If you combined half of the East Coast into one state, even including places like Virginia, Florida, etc you would still likely end up with an anti-gun state overall.
