Scott L. Bach

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

In nominating Scott L. Bach, an attorney from New Jersey, as CCRKBA Gun Rights Defender of the Month for November, John M. Snyder, CCRKBA Public Affairs Director, said that, â€œat this time, when there is so much controversy over our gun rights at the state level, we are fortunate to have such articulate spokesmen defending our rights as Scott Bach has proved himself to be. He is most deserving of this Award, as he has been most consistent and forthright in defending the individual Second Amendment civil right to keep and bear arms.â€
Scott spoke at the recent national Gun Rights Policy Conference held in Phoenix, Arizona, co-sponsored by CCRKBA and the Second Amendment Foundation. He was a featured speaker on a panel which reviewed legislative affairs in a number of states.
Scott is President of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs. He also is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association.
Scott indicates he is a member of the law enforcement community and that he is licensed to practice in four states.
Previously, his professional experience has included internships in the United States Congress, the office of the U.S. Attorney, and the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Scott has written extensively on gun rights in both New Jersey and in the country as a whole.
Just a few months ago, he wrote an incisive analysis on what he termed firearms rationing, reasoning that statutes which mandate such buying and selling actually facilitate victimization of the innocent.
He noted that a court in New Jersey recently had stated that, â€œThere is no rational relationship between restricting the number of guns that a licensed gun dealer and a licensed gun owner can transact per month and the frequency of illegal gun possession and crime.â€
Bach wrote that, â€œin so holding, the court voided a local ordinance that rationed firearms specifically to law-abiding citizens pre-certified by the State as having no criminal or mental health record after passing a 13-point background investigation.
â€œTrying to reduce gun crime by rationing firearms to law-abiding citizens is a little like trying to reduce stabbings by rationing steak knives to restaurant goers, which is why the Court found the ordinance to be irrational. The criminal misuse of any lawful product is not a function of the number of units sold to honest citizens; itâ€™s a function of how effectively society deals with those who misuse them.â€
In his article, Scott targeted directly the gun grabbers in New Jersey who apparently refused to accept the rational basis for the Courtâ€™s ruling in the case Scott cited in the article.
â€œDespite judicial recognition of the fallacy of gun rationing,â€ wrote Scott, â€œgun ban extremist group CeaseFire NJ, embarrassed by its loss at the local level, is now pushing for passage of statewide gun rationing, misleadingly citing statistics to buoy their latest whopper â€“ that handguns bought by law-abiding citizens from New Jersey licensed dealers are significantly involved in crime and illegal trafficking. Obtaining a permit to purchase a handgun in New Jersey is a lengthy, intrusive, expensive and complicated process. The absurd notion that criminals voluntarily subject themselves to police fingerprinting, invasive background checks, licensing fees, and months of delays, only to then turn around and illegally sell the guns registered to them on the street, strains reason and credibility.
â€œYet thatâ€™s precisely the fairy tale that CeaseFire and its gun grabbing director Bryan Miller are peddling to the legislature, deceptively citing BATFE gun tracing statistics to â€˜proveâ€™ that large quantities of legally purchased guns are used in crime. What they conveniently forget to mention is that a large percentage of the traced guns have nothing whatsoever to do with criminal activity, but they are given the label â€˜crime gunâ€™ nevertheless, because of a BATFE database requirement that all traced firearms must first be given a descriptive code before they can be entered into the system, and the available codes happen to carry the designation â€˜crimeâ€™ in their name, regardless of whether the traced firearms were actually involved in crime.â€
In a devastating statement, Scott wrote that, â€œthe so-called â€˜crime gunsâ€™ misleadingly cited by CeaseFire include firearms recovered after house fires, floods and other natural disasters, firearms recovered from gun buy-back programs, firearms surrendered by the spouses of deceased firearms owners, firearms identified during routine inspections of licensed dealer books and records, firearms seized by court order, and lost or stolen firearms that are later recovered, all of which have to be booked as â€˜crime gunsâ€™ before they can be traced.â€