When New Jersey's ban on large-capacity gun magazines went into effect last December, it forced gun owners to make a decision.
Should they turn the magazines over to law enforcement? Should they modify them into compliance? Should they sell them to authorized owners or store them in another state?
Or simply ignore the law which banned magazines that have more than 10 rounds?
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As the states largest gun group challenges the constitutionality of the law, gun owners have had to get creative with how they abide by the law.
Some gun owners have buried their large-capacity magazines in their backyard or behind sheetrock in their garage, said Eric Rebels, a local gun rights activist and owner of GunSitters, a secure firearms storage system company.
Others are opting to store them away from their homes.
"Thousands and thousands" of large-capacity magazines are stored currently at GunSitters in Whippany, where gun owners have handed over their large-capacity magazines, taking advantage of the storage option as litigation plays out, Rebels said. Some have turned over more than 100 magazines, which are held in a 3,000-square-foot steel vault.
In conjunction with County Line Firearms, a gun store in East Hanover where Rebels is a manager, they collect, catalogue and store as many large-capacity magazines as they can. It costs $1.25 per magazine a month to store it there.
Gun stores are legally allowed to store the banned magazines, but they cannot sell them.
The one thing Rebels said gun owners are not doing is handing their large-capacity magazines over to law enforcement, one of the choices state officials encouraged when the law went into effect.
A New Jersey State Police spokesman said not a single large-capacity magazine has been turned in since the law went into effect nearly nine months ago.
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The storage of the banned magazines is also helping to fund the lawsuit challenging the large-capacity magazine ban law. Rebels said 20 percent of the money through the storage program is going towards funding the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistols lawsuit.
They plan to appeal it up to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary, said Bach, the executive director of the organization. If the ban remains intact, Rebels said people who have their magazines stored in the vault can have them modified to 10 rounds or sell or ship them out of state.
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Edited by Euler, 16 October 2019 - 10:50 PM.
