Gun Owners Sound Alarm Over New Jersey Glock Subpoenas

The office of New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport is reportedly sending subpoenas to firearms dealers across the state demanding records of Glock pistol sales to Garden State residents over the past ten years.

The National Rifle Association revealed this effort last month in an alert from the organization’s Institute for Legislative Action. Somehow, NRA suggested, the subpoenas are connected to a lawsuit New Jersey filed against Glock more than a year ago, under the state’s public nuisance law.

That lawsuit was filed by former New Jersey AG Matthew Platkin, alleging “multiple violations of the State’s firearms industry public safety law through the knowing manufacture, sale, and distribution of its namesake pistols, which can easily be configured to fire automatically as illegal machine guns…”

NRA suggested the effort to get those records would be to “make these transactions a matter of public record.” As a result, the identities of gun owners would then become available to the media.

“This is being done solely for the purpose of harassing and doxxing residents who purchased the most popular pistol in America,” NRA said.

“Subpoenaing law-abiding firearm dealers to help build a state gun registry is unconstitutional and utterly outrageous,” said John Commerford, NRA-ILA Executive Director, in the alert. “If New Jersey believes it can trample the Second Amendment and federal law with impunity, they are gravely mistaken. The NRA will not stand idly by while progressive politicians attempt to implement this dangerous, Orwellian scheme to dox, track, and harass honest, law-abiding Americans, and we are prepared to take any action necessary to protect the rights of New Jersey gun owners.”

Ammoland News spoke with Glassboro, NJ gun dealer Wayne Viden, proprietor at Bob’s Little Sport Shop, which has been a family-owned operation for more than 60 years. He goes along with the theory that this is an effort to make gun owner information part of the public record.

“We have not gotten a subpoena, yet,” Viden told Ammoland in a telephone interview. “The only thing I know is what I’ve read (from NRA).”

However, he said the scenario clearly suggests NRA’s doxxing theory is correct, because “New Jersey already has that information” about handgun purchases. The only reason for this information to be added to any legal action would be for the purpose of placing it in the public domain.

Viden recalled how New York gun permit holders’ identities were revealed by a newspaper article many years ago. It created a firestorm.

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New Jersey’s lawsuit against Glock is not the only such action. Minnesota also sued Glock last year, as did the City of Seattle. At issue is the complaint that Glock pistols can be illegally converted to fire fully-automatic with the insertion of a device called a “Glock switch.”

California-based attorney Kostas Moros discussed the implications of this move by New Jersey recently in a 2,600-word essay in which he accused the state of waging “lawfare” against Glock, Inc.

“The state is claiming the over 40-year-old design of the gun is too easy to illegally convert into a machine gun,” Moros writes. “Other states have filed similar lawsuits, and some like California have now banned the sale of Glocks, which are the most popular handguns in the country. These efforts are a way to coverup the failures of leadership in antigun states.”

A few lines later, Moros explains, “For many people who choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights, their status as a gun owner remains an intensely private matter. Americans have a variety of reasons for wanting to keep their gun ownership to themselves. For some who live in high crime neighborhoods, they may fear that the very firearms they own for self-defense could be an enticing target for burglars when they are not home. Others may not want their friends, family, or local community to know they own firearms because they fear the potential social ostracism that may occur in the places where gun ownership remains controversial.

“Whatever their reasons for secrecy,” Moros writes, “our historical tradition supports the idea that Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their status as gun owners.”

In his summation, Moros observes, “Americans have always had the implicit right to keep their status as a gun owner confidential, often even from the federal government itself. That right has been subject only to narrow exceptions.”

In early May, Davenport’s office issued a press release about guns and the state’s Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) law, announcing “the launch of a multi-year public awareness campaign to raise awareness about the life-saving potential of New Jersey’s Extreme Risk Protective Order (ERPO) law that allows for the temporary removal of firearms from individuals who pose a danger of causing bodily harm to themselves or others. New Jersey’s ERPO Act of 2018 serves as a mechanism to seek the temporary suspension of firearms access for at-risk individuals.”

There was nothing in the release about subpoenas for gun dealer records.

Last year, after Glock moved to dismiss the New Jersey lawsuit, Superior Court Judge Lisa M. Adubato rejected the motion.

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About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.