Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, shown in this May file photo, is leading the push to tighten New Jersey’s gun laws
The state Assembly wasted little time today approving 22 bills intended to curb gun violence despite protests from Republicans, who said Democrats put the legislation, some of it flawed, on too fast a track.
The session was largely free of the drama provided by a rowdy crowd that jammed the Statehouse annex for last week’s hearing, but opponents vowed a fierce political battle ahead if the measures advanced any further.
“They have awakened a sleeping giant in an election year,” Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, said in an interview shortly before the vote.
Most of the nearly two dozen bills taken up in the wake of the shootings in Newtown, Conn., were approved largely along party lines, and a few received near-unanimous support.
h/t John P
