New Lawsuit Takes on NJ’s Ban on Self-Defense With Non-Firearms

A bizarre law in New Jersey that prohibits carrying almost anything other than a firearm for self-defense is being challenged by the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs and Knife Rights. 

The lawsuit, filed today in federal court, takes on New Jersey Statute 2C:39-5(d), which essentially criminalizes arming yourself in potential self-defense with anything that might be used as a weapon. There’s a carve-out in state law for individuals who possess a valid license to carry a firearm, and another exception for “[O]ne pocket-sized device which contains and releases not more than three-quarters of an ounce of chemical substance not ordinarily capable of lethal use or of inflicting serious bodily injury, but rather, is intended to produce temporary physical discomfort or disability through being vaporized or otherwise dispensed in the air.” Other than that, though, carrying anything else for the purposes of self-defense is a crime.

From the ANJRPC press release announcing the lawsuit:

Under New Jersey law, you can carry a baseball bat to a ball game, but take it with you because you are concerned that you might need it for self-defense, and you have just committed a felony-level offense that carries a real prison term. The same is true for hundreds of other non-firearm tools — including every day household objects. Our new lawsuit aims to put an end to this madness.

“No one should face illegal weapons charges for carrying something to protect their own life,” said ANJRPC President Kathy Chatterton. “New Jersey treats the means of self-defense as the crime itself. This is a law that enables criminals and disables victims. Its time has run out.”

Knife Rights Chairman Doug Ritter said, “The insanity of New Jersey’s laws banning knives and other non-firearm weapons for self-defense cannot stand in the post-Bruen era. Knife Rights is pleased to be a part of this important case which aims to finally set things right in New Jersey for knife owners and many others.”

This really is a nutty law, but it’s also the perfect encapsulation of the gun control mindset that targets inanimate objects instead of the individuals using them for nefarious or lawful purposes. 

What does it matter if someone chooses to defend themselves with a bat or a knife, so long as they’re reacting to a legitimate threat? The fact that someone could face prison time because they defended themselves with a tool not designated by the state as a self-defense weapon is utterly insane, and I’m glad to see ANJRPC and Knife Rights teaming up to challenge the law. 

Second Amendment attorney Daniel Schmutter is representing the plaintiffs, and the complaint he authored details the many problems with New Jersey’s statute. 

The United States Supreme Court has made it clear that arms are “[w]eapons of offence, or armour of defence” “anything that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.” Arms come in many forms, not just guns. While the Bruen decision has forced New Jersey to allow the carry of guns for self-defense, New Jersey law still explicitly bans and punishes the carry of common, everyday objects other than firearms specifically for the purpose of self-defense. That flies in the face of Bruen and must change. This case aims to do just that.

… New Jersey demands that its citizens be defenseless when they go about their day in public. Defenseless. Until forced to issue Permits to Carry a Handgun by the Bruen decision in 2022, New Jersey banned its citizens from carrying any weapon for self-defense. Still today, New Jerseyans cannot carry any ordinary object for protection against violent crime, not a baseball bat, not a stick, not a knife, not a pair of scissors, not anything. If a person keeps an ordinary baseball bat in her car or if she keeps a small baton (sometimes called a kuboton) on her keychain she can find herself arrested and thrown in prison under New Jersey law.

My late wife kept an aluminum baseball bat in the back seat of her truck, and I’ve never bothered to take it out. I had no idea that could result in a felony charge if I were to drive the truck up to New Jersey for some reason. 

As Schmutter makes clear, the New Jersey statute in question is simply incompatible with the Second Amendment. New Jersey defines “weapon” as “anything readily capable of lethal use or of inflicting serious bodily injury,” while prohibiting the possession of any weapon “under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for such lawful uses as it may have.”

Schmutter cites a 1990 court decision where a single mother of young children was convicted of possession of a box cutter after successfully fending off her violent ex-boyfriend who was in the process of beating her to death. Rochelle Kelly had been in an abusive relationship with a guy named Randolph Boone, who was also the father of her child. 

According to the court, Boone had repeatedly beaten her, fractured her nose, knocked out some of her teeth, threatened her with weapons, and continued harassing her even after she left him. On the day in question, Boone threatened Kelly not to come near the street corner where he usually hung out. 

Kelly said police had previously been ineffective in helping her, so she put a razor used to cut carpet in her pocket before going out. Several hours later she encountered Boone, he allegedly began hitting her, and she slashed him with the razor.

Kelly was acquitted of aggravated assault and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, but was convicted of possession of a weapon “under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for such lawful uses as it may have.” The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld that conviction, ruling that “self-defense does not excuse possession of a weapon in violation of section 5d except in ‘those rare and momentary circumstances where an individual arms himself spontaneously to meet an immediate danger.'”

As Schmutter notes, in the pre-Bruen days, that effectively cut off all means of self-defense in public, but since 2022 the law now requires using the most force possible in self-defense. “Providing for any form of self-defense using less force than a handgun is a crime in New Jersey.”

That includes commonly owned knives, as well as other items that are in common use for lawful purposes that may also have some benefit as a self-defense tool. This seems to be squarely contradicted by the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence, and the plaintiffs have an incredibly strong case.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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