New Jersey's strict gun laws need to be fixed so people who are legally entitled to own guns aren't arrested and prosecuted, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told
Newsmax TV on Monday.
"These laws have to be addressed," Kerik said on "America's Forum" during an interview with J.D. Hayworth, Miranda Khan and Larry Elder. If Gov. Chris Christie won't take care of the problem, "the next governor is going to have to."
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Currently, the law calls for prosecution when a person is transporting a weapon, depending on how it was being moved or where it was situated in a vehicle, and "instead of some misdemeanor issue or some regulatory issue, these people are charged with felonies," Kerik said.
This leads to felonies such as in the case of a young man who worked for an armored car company and was on a list to become a police officer.
"He is now a convicted felon," said Kerik. "He can't get a job; he's ruined for life, and it's wrong."
Christie has commuted at least one sentence for a man who was sentenced to seven years in prison for his legally owned gun, Kerik said, but "the objective here is to change the laws, fix the laws, so that these things don't happen and he doesn't have to commute any one sentence or pardon them."
In the case of the armored car company worker, appeals are going on and Kerik hopes Christie will look at the case.
"This is a decent young kid," he said. "He's at the beginning of his life, his career, he was a worker, he's paying taxes, he seems like an all-around good guy, and he wanted to be a cop."
But as a convicted felon, "it's a lifelong collateral consequence that you have to deal with, and it basically imposes personal and professional annihilation for the rest of your life," Kerik said.
Kerik on Monday also voiced concerns about the news over the weekend that a group calling itself the
Islamic State Hacking Division put out allegedly hacked information about members of the Air Force, Army and Navy, including photos and ranks, on the Internet and urged attacks on them and their families.
A defense source, though, said most of the information was in fact available in public records and through social media, and did not appear to have been hacked from government servers.
"We should be extremely concerned," said Kerik. "The whole social media thing is one element of security that we have to be concerned with the Internet in general, the economic data, the personal, financial data that's on the Internet today is extremely concerning."
However, he doesn't think anyone should be surprised, as "these are things that not only ISIS and al-Qaida but a bunch of these radical groups talk about doing."
There are other tech threats, such as from Russia, China, Venezuela, and North Korea, he pointed out.
"This kill list is extremely important because the military, local law enforcement, our legislators, they've already been put on notice that they are on these lists, that there are orders out there for the lone wolves, if you will, to come out and assassinate or kill them," he said. "Basically, it's a way we live now and we're going to have to live for decades to come."
Kerik said it's still too early to tell if the list is real, as "sometimes, as we've seen in the past, these could be cranks, somebody out there jerking around," but he doesn't think that is the case this time.
"This list and some of the other stuff, especially when they had real personal information and although defense has not confirmed that, if it wasn't real information we would have heard it already," he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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