By The Blaze. Disabled Iraq war veteran Leonard Cottrell Jr. alleges New Jersey State Police attempted to confiscate his firearms last month without a warrant. He stood his ground, held to his Second Amendment rights, and did not let police take them.

Now, Cottrell is blaming a recently implemented New Jersey law, which he says targets law abiding gun owners. . .

Cottrell said his wife allowed the officers to search their home, including his son’s room, but they did not locate any weapons. Still, Cottrell said police wanted to confiscate his firearms — a shotgun and pistol — despite not having a warrant to do so. . .

But Cottrell, who served three tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom, was having none of it.

Cottrell said the incident is related to a law New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed into law in March. The law allows police to seize guns from law abiding citizens who the state determines pose a threat to themselves or others — even without due process. (Read more from “Veteran Says Police Tried to Confiscate His Guns Without a Warrant, Due Process. He Said No.” HERE)

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Vet Says Troopers Asked to Take His Guns Without a Warrant. He Didn’t Let Them

By NJ. . .Cottrell, a disabled U.S. Army veteran who served three tours during “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” owns a shotgun and a pistol. He has all the correct permits to own the firearms, he said, and predominately uses the shotgun to hunt.

He said his wife allowed the officers to enter the home, and with her permission, they searched his son’s room — but they did not find any weapons, he said. The officers, he said, didn’t have a warrant but still wanted to take his guns. Cottrell wouldn’t let them.

“No one from the state was going to take my firearms without due process,” he said Thursday.

He said the attempted seizure resulted because of a new law Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law that makes it easier for police to confiscate guns when someone in the state poses a threat to themselves or others. The law is part of a broader statewide effort to make New Jersey’s gun laws even tougher amid the national outcry for more gun control in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

The U.S. Secret Service said Thursday that schools around the country should establish teams to evaluate potential threats and encourage students to report troubling behavior. (Read more from “Vet Says Troopers Asked to Take His Guns Without a Warrant. He Didn’t Let Them” HERE)

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How is it that so many kids raised on “Harry Potter”, “The Hunger Games”, “Star Wars”, and all the Marvel action figure movies manage to miss a critical point of the stories? The lesson being: If you want to prevail over evil villains, you must have the proper tools to fight back.

Millions of people protect themselves and their families with guns every day in the United States. They choose guns as a means of self-defense for the same reason the Secret Service uses them to protect the president: guns stop bad people from doing bad things to good people.

It’s absurd to speak about the right of self-defense in theory but then deny people the tools they need to exercise that right.

Without a gun, most Americans are defenseless at the hands of a violent criminal. How many of us have training in hand-to-hand fighting, the physical strength, and the mental resilience to react in a fight-or-flight situation to repel an aggressive predator, especially someone who attacks us first and is armed with a deadly weapon?

Does a gun guarantee your safety? No, but it gives you the ability to defend yourself against an armed, physically superior, or mentally unstable attacker (or all three).

Why in the world would anyone not want to have the means to protect themselves and their families against criminal predators and lunatics? Worse yet, why would anyone actively lobby their government to deprive themselves and every other law-abiding citizen of the most effective means to protect themselves?

Guns Are Life-Saving Tools

The gun grabbers are convinced that if we shut down the National Rifle Association and take away guns from law-abiding gun owners, then bad people will no longer have the tools to do bad things.

A gun is a tool, plain and simple. You should own a gun for the same reason you install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, purchase fire extinguishers, and buckle your seat belt. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Smart people are prepared. Foolish people bring a knife—or nothing at all—to a gunfight.

The gun grabbers say: “There is no evidence that guns save lives.” The truth: If there is no proof that guns save lives, then why does every American law enforcement agency, including the U.S. Secret Service, carry guns? What’s the point of the guns?

There is an old saying in the world of investing: “Do what the smart money does.” This means that when you personally invest, it makes sense to buy and sell the same investments as the “smart money” people—large banks, institutional investors, hedge funds, and investment gurus like Warren Buffett. The idea is that these industry leaders have a better understanding of the marketplace and better access to information than ordinary investors do. And that is usually true.

What do the “smart money” people do when it comes to protecting lives?

Virtually all professionals carry guns—and lots of them. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies charged with protecting the streets you walk on all carry guns. The Secret Service protects the president with guns. The federal Department of Homeland Security, with its $44 billion annual budget, issues its own agents handguns and fully automatic rifles (rifles far more powerful than the AR-15s many gun grabbers don’t want you to have to protect yourself).

So, the smart money in the business of protecting lives chooses guns. That’s right. They choose guns!

Guns Are Often Used for Defense

But if you don’t want to follow the smart money on guns, then let’s turn to the statistical scoreboard. Does civilian gun use help in self-defense against criminals?

The U.S. Department of Justice investigated firearm violence from 1993 through 2011. The report found, “In 2007–2011, about 1 percent of nonfatal violent crime victims used a firearm in self-defense.” Anti-gun zealots attempt to use this statistic to discredit the use of a gun as a viable means of self-defense, and by extension, to discredit gun ownership in general.

But look deeper into the numbers. During that five-year period, the Department of Justice confirmed a total of 338,700 defensive gun uses in both violent attacks and property crimes where a victim was involved. That equals an average of 67,740 defensive gun uses every year. In other words, according to the Justice Department’s own statistics, 67,740 people a year don’t become victims because they own a gun. (I suspect that if more states allowed concealed carry to be widespread, the number of instances of defensive gun uses would be even higher.)

Is it significant that at least 67,740 individuals use a gun in self-defense each year? Well, in 2016, 37,461 people died in motor vehicle accidents in the United States; in 2015, the number was 35,092 people. Mark Rosekind, administrator of the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA), called those road fatalities “an immediate crisis.” If the NHTSA administrator considers it a crisis that approximately 37,000 people are dying annually from car accidents, then saving nearly twice that many people each year through the use of firearms is simply stunning.

In reality, the Department of Justice findings about defensive gun uses are very conservative. A 2013 study ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and conducted by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council found that “Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence…. Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million . . . in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008…. On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey….”

The most comprehensive study ever conducted about defensive gun use in the United States was a 1995 survey published by criminologist Gary Kleck in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. This study reported between 2.1 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year.

Ultimately, the number of defensive gun uses doesn’t matter much to the anti-gun zealots. Whether the number is 67,000 or 2.5 million or anywhere in between, they’ll do whatever they can to dismiss defensive gun uses as insignificant. They want to focus only on the dead people lying in the street rather than those folks who use a firearm to remain standing.

I suspect those people still alive would have a different view. (For more from the author of “More People Use a Gun in Self-Defense Each Year Than Die in Car Accidents” please click HERE)

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The state of New Jersey, which is known for its strict gun laws, has tightened regulations with new legislation that gives citizens 180 days to surrender all firearms and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds —and if they are caught with the newly illegal contraband, they will be treated as criminals.

The new rules are courtesy of Assembly Bill 2761, which was recently passed by the state. The bill’s purpose is to reduce “maximum capacity of ammunition magazines to 10 rounds,” and the text states that citizens will have 180 days to comply:

A person who legally owns a semi-automatic rifle with a fixed magazine capacity exceeding 10 rounds or a large capacity ammunition magazine… which is capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition… may retain possession of that rifle or magazine for a period not to exceed 180 days after the effective date of this act.

During the 180-day period, the bill states that citizens can get rid of their firearms and magazines by:

Transfer the semi-automatic rifle or magazine to any person or firm lawfully entitled to own or possess that firearm or magazine;
Render the semi-automatic rifle or magazine inoperable or permanently modify a large capacity ammunition magazine to accept 10 rounds or less;
Voluntarily surrender the semi-automatic rifle or magazine

The bill also includes a detailed process for citizens who choose to “voluntarily surrender” their newly illegal firearms and magazines to police. It states that in order to surrender the weapons without being convicted of a crime, the citizens must give written notice, which includes “the proposed date and time of surrender,” and the weapons must be given to the superintendent or the chief of police in the municipality in which the individual lives.

The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs is fighting back against the legislation by filing a motion in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey to block enforcement of the law, on the basis that it violates the Second Amendment.

Scott Bach, the group’s executive director, told the Washington Free Beacon that they are fighting back against the new law because they believe it will be “ignored by criminals and madmen,” and will only affect the law-abiding gun owners who are turned into criminals because of its existence.

“It turns one million people into criminals with the stroke of a pen, limits self-defense, and takes away property lawfully acquired. Buy it yesterday, ban it today, go to prison tomorrow—it’s the Jersey way, and the goal of our lawsuit is to boot this law, which makes no one safer, into the trash heap of history where it belongs,” Bach said.

Those who choose to protect themselves and their families and resist this legislation by holding on to their weapons will be charged with a 4th degree felony and face up to 18 months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

This legislation is just one of several bills that have been passed in New Jersey recently, with the purpose of increasing gun restrictions in a state that is already known for its strict gun laws. Gov. Phil Murphy signed the bills into law earlier this month, which are all targeted at increasing gun control by expanding background checks, adding increased restrictions to concealed carry permits, and establishing a “red flag” system where individuals can report people who they believe are dangerous, and those suspects will have their firearms temporarily seized by police.

Assembly Bill 1217 authorizes “gun violence restraining orders” and firearm seizure warrants; Assembly Bill 1181 requires firearms seizure when mental health professionals determines a patient poses a threat of harm to himself or others; Assembly Bill 2757 requires background check for private gun sales; Assembly Bill 2758 codifies and restricts regulations defining justifiable need to carry handgun; and Assembly Bill 2759 prohibits possession of ammunition that qualifies as “capable of penetrating body armor.”

Yet even with the current gun regulations in place, a convicted felon who spent years in prison on aggravated manslaughter charges was able to access a handgun, which he used to unleash a hail of bullets on a crowd at an arts festival in Trenton, New Jersey, last week, and 22 people were injured as a result. Everything he did to obtain the gun and open fire was illegal—none of the laws stopped him.

When strict control gun control laws are enforced, it is not the criminals who suffer, but the law-abiding citizens who own guns for the purpose of protecting themselves and their families, and the new gun restrictions in New Jersey set a dangerous precedent that could serve as a blueprint for other states to follow. (For more from the author of “State Bans Guns That Hold More Than 10 Rounds, Citizens Told to Surrender Them or Become Criminals” please click HERE)

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