NJ.com Blames Straw Purchases for All of New Jersey’s Problem

When in doubt blame someone else. That often seems to be the New Jersey way of doing things, especially from its mainstream media. This past weekend NJ.com noted that illegal guns are being smuggled into New Jersey and that this is the reason for crime in the Garden State.

The news site notes that there has been a wave of shootings in the past year, “most of the shootings were drug or gang-related.” Additionally, NJ.com stresses, “New Jersey has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, but contradictory laws exist from state to state, and Interstate 95 and its connector highways have earned the name the ‘Iron Pipeline’ as a popular gun smuggling route.”

The kicker of course, is that the site then blames the problem not on the drug dealers and gang members but on the guns. The site offers this take:

“‘Straw’ purchases — when a person with no criminal record buys weapons that are then sold to people who would not be able to legally buy a gun — are often how guns get into the hands of criminals, even in states with tough laws like New Jersey.”

Is there any proof that this is in fact true? And even if it is true, isn’t this proof enough that the criminals will manage to find a way to obtaining guns. If the gun laws are so tough, should that be evidence that criminals will ignore those laws? But of course we know that New Jersey needs some way of blaming its problem on someone else.