North Jersey dot com
Under New Jersey law, Robert Leonardis is exactly the kind of person who never should own a gun. And the .45-caliber handgun police say he fired, nearly killing a Hackensack police officer, never should have wound up in the state.
Leonardis is a member of the Sex, Money, Murder set of the Bloods gang with a long criminal record, according to police. On July 22 he allegedly opened fire on three Hackensack police officers, missing Officer Joseph Ayoubi by inches.
Like most guns used for crimes in New Jersey, the handgun Leonardis used was trafficked illegally from another state, police say. His gun was mailed from Florida via UPS, said Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli.
New Jersey’s gun laws have long been and remain among the toughest in the nation. But almost every day, New Jersey residents are shot and killed in gun crimes. Statistics indicate that the vast majority of those cases involve guns purchased in other states and transported to New Jersey illegally.
Of more than 2,000 guns used in New Jersey crimes that were traced to their state of origin, fully 80 percent originated elsewhere, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). More than half — 55 percent — were imported from just seven states: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Ohio, all of which have weaker gun-control laws than New Jersey.
That fact of life hampers efforts in New Jersey to limit the number of guns illegally on the street. The importance of state law is seen in states that take a more lax approach to gun control. In Pennsylvania and Florida, for instance, 79 percent of all crime guns originate in the same state as the crime, according to the ATF.