One popular scene from And Justice For All played out almost verbatim during an April 30, 2013 meeting of the New Jersey State Law and Public Safety Committee when committee chairman New Jersey State Senator Donald Norcross shouted to one constituent, identified as New Jersey resident James Kaleda “You’re out of order!” Almost as if he was following the script written for Al Pacino, James Kaleda retorted “this meeting is out of order!” It was, perhaps, the most fitting assertion during an otherwise uneventful four-hour long session where it appeared that the passage of seven-(7) new restrictive state gun control measures was decided long before the hearings began.
Exactly what egregious offense did Mr. Kaleda commit that compelled Senator Norcross to shut off his microphone and have him physically escorted from the public meeting? Some might contend that it’s a bit difficult to tell, but it seemed that a simple utterance of the words “gun control” might have played a part. It appears that Senator Norcross, acting with the imprimatur of the federal government to disarm his law-abiding constituents, has also been emboldened to forcibly disallow discordant discussion despite its intellectual value. And there it is, ladies and gentlemen, a textbook example of the inextricable connection between our right to bear arms and our right to free speech.
