NJ Attorney General Matt Platkin Muffs Firearm Facts During Q&A

I don’t expect anti-gun politicians to be firearm experts, but I do expect anti-gun attorneys general to at least be familiar enough with them to use the law correctly.

In New Jersey, it seems that’s way too much to ask.

See, Attorney General Matt Platkin recently held a Q&A via Zoom, where he was asked a couple of questions by this guy named John Petrolino, who happens to write for a number of places, including somewhere called Bearing Arms.

Anyway, John asked Platkin a couple of questions about forced reset triggers and bump stocks. Let’s watch the video:

So he starts by claiming that Bruen doesn’t necessarily require an analog from 1791, which is fair, but he’s also dodging the fact that there wouldn’t be a precedent for this from the time of the 14th Amendment, either.

Either way, he then goes on to claim that the law has long held that machine gun conversion devices, like FRTs and bump stocks, are illegal. This is troubling, not because he’s wrong about machine gun conversion devices, but because he doesn’t know what a conversion device actually is.

If you’re talking about a full-auto sear, then sure. The law has been in place for more than 90 years now, so that would be an accurate summation.

However, FRTs and bump stocks are no such thing.

Additionally, his claim that these devices turn an AR-15 into something “more powerful than the highest grade military machine guns” is idiotic. I don’t care what I do to my AR-15s, they’re not going to suddenly become more powerful than a Ma Deuce, much less an M-249 or some other light machine gun.

The claim is asinine, to say the least.

John then asks Platkin about FRTs, mentioning the Cargill decision and how it focused on how a machine gun is defined in federal law, asking if FRTs also fire only a single round with a single pull of the trigger. There, Platkin says that no, they don’t. He claims that it’s just a single pull of the trigger.

He’s wrong.

Here’s a video that is a cutaway of a Rare Breed FRT15 trigger in operation.

Note how the action cycles, then the trigger has to be pulled again for it to cycle once again. It has a short length of pull, but there is still a pull required. It’s one pull, one shot fired.

That means FRTs don’t meet the legal definition of a device that converts a firearm into a machine gun.

Yes, all of that happens very fast, and I get that some people are going to be uncomfortable with that rate of fire, but the law wasn’t based around rate of fire. It was based on how the mechanisms functioned. FRTs don’t change that mechanism in any way, shape, or form.

Platkin simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about here or worse, he knows and is outright lying.

That National Association for Gun Rights posted about this on X, and they’re…less than thrilled with Platkin.

Coming in first in the “most idiotic and worst liar” competition, our own @NewJerseyOAG

1. An FRT or Bump Stock does not convert a firearm to a machine gun, per SCOTUS and common sense.
2. An FRT has never been used to kill law enforcement.
3. “More powerful than the highest… pic.twitter.com/2gmVJLdiO1

— National Association for Gun Rights (@NatlGunRights) June 11, 2025

I couldn’t agree more.

We’re countering the lies of the anti-gun crowd, and we need your help to spread the truth about Second Amendment rights. Sign up here to become a VIP, VIP Gold, or VIP Platinum member today. and use the promo code POTUS47 for an incredible 74% off!