North Jersey – by NICHOLAS PUGLIESE
BERGENFIELD — A county SWAT team and police raided a house on Levitt Avenue this week and arrested two residents for illegally possessing an assortment of assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines, authorities said Wednesday.
Police recovered two AR-15 assault rifles with sliding stocks, a Ruger Mini-30 assault rifle with a folding stock and a Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle, along with four other firearms, a spokeswoman for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. Police also found three high-capacity ammunition magazines, a large quantity of ammunition and about 45 grams of marijuana in their search of the home on Tuesday, she said.
Keith Knaack, 47, and Laura Ruddiman, 53, were each charged with four counts of possessing an assault rifle, a second-degree crime, and three counts of possessing high-capacity ammunition magazines, a fourth-degree crime, the spokeswoman, Maureen Parenta, said.
Knaack also was charged with possessing a firearm despite having been previously convicted for intending to distribute a controlled dangerous substance, she said.
The pair were taken to the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack on $75,000 bail, she said. Knaack remained in jail as of Wednesday afternoon, while Ruddiman had been released on bail, according to jail records.
Parenta said Tuesday’s arrests followed a joint investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office, the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office and the Bergenfield and Dumont police departments.
Authorities declined to say Wednesday how they became aware of the presence of the firearms in the house.
New Jersey has banned so-called assault weapons since 1990. State law prohibits the sale and possession of more than 50 specific weapons and any that are “substantially identical.” The ban includes semiautomatic rifles with magazines that hold more than 15 rounds, as well as those that have adjustable stocks, pistol grips, bayonet mounts, flash suppressors or a threaded barrel.
One State that I will never visit. Idiots calling semi-autos “assault weapons”. All the above mentioned firearms are excellent for sporting and defending ones self. The tyrants are surely scared for their own skin as the residents of that state are waking up and will soon take care of business, if not out-gunned.
Whether or not they’re classified as assault weapons, it IS unconstitutional to ban weapons and higher capacity magazines, no matter what they look like!
I am SO glad that I live in Arizona where you can open or conceal carry loaded firearms with NO permits necessary!
I agree 100 percent. I live in Idaho and we also have no permits for concealed carry. Every household has tons of firearms and ammo.
What do you mean without permits? Is it that you don’t have to file paperwork with the township or county for a background check? That you can go to a gunshop and buy just like any other store?
Forgive my ignorance but I have been thinking about getting protection for myself for quite some time now and haven’t because I don’t believe it is constitutional to register guns. If you register they know exactly where to come to confiscated them.
Patricia, I strongly recommend you get a good gun, and don’t worry about the government knowing you have it. If they ever try to confiscate, simply fight back along with everyone else.
Sure, if that happens then many of us will be killed. But we all have to die sooner or later anyway, so it might as well be while defending our freedom and our dignity. Just be sure to take some goons down with you.
No, the permit that I was referring to would be a concealed carry permit. Idaho did away with the permits this year. Now everyone can carry concealed and not have to jump through hoops and pay for a permit. If you are looking for weapons without going through the background checks, buy from an individual. In Idaho and Washington we have the “Nickel’s Worth” weekly paper for buying and selling anything, guns included.
They are getting brave
This is the beginning of the larger gun grabs
Because they know if they bum rush us the
Blood will flow
These will be incremental and spread like a bad decease
Relinquish NOTHING but lead
Yep. The liars are actin’ strong.
If they can come into your home without probable cause it is unconstitutional search. Is it not?
As I understand it private sales do not have to be reported. What if these people had purchased privately? Are they then accused of stealing the guns?
“If they can come into your home without probable cause it is unconstitutional search. Is it not?”
“[Amendment IV.]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
“As I understand it private sales do not have to be reported. What if these people had purchased privately?”
“[Amendment II.]
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
There is a period at the end of that statement.
That means, simply, NO discussion is allowed on the subject of restricting guns… every single gun ‘law’ EVER enacted is in DIRECT VIOLATION of our 2nd amendment UNalienable right.
Hi patricia. We have no rights, and any semblance of them is lip service. They unfortunately are a facade that is advertised but not delivered. Their courtroom is the deciding factor in any accusations, and their legal system which violates our rights six ways to Sunday is what you would need to get you there. It won’t happen or you have enough $ to keep you out of it in the first place. I don’t mean to be a killjoy.
I’m not sure why those people bothered to keep those weapons if they were just going to give them up (along with their freedom) to the pigs without a fight. Maybe they were careless and allowed themselves to be taken by surprise.
You know how those TWAT squads operate, coming at people like cockroaches in the middle of the night when everyone is suppose to be sound asleep. Good reason to reinforce your front door…that 45-60 seconds could save your lives, regardless if it’s uniformed thugs or regular thus breaking in your door in the middle of the night.
“Authorities declined to say Wednesday how they became aware of the presence of the firearms in the house.”
A scumbag “see something, say something” @sshole of a neighbor, or a paid snitch.
Either way, both are deserving of dirt overcoats for their treason – complicity with the enemy.
It’s unfortunate the people seem to be so ignorant of the fact that they are the lawful government on the land of these united States, and of the fully protected powers they possess in common law as a result of terms agreed to in the Articles of Confederation and its further perfecting agreement, the Constitution for the united States of America, that document proving they are the law givers by virtue of that Constitution being the “supreme Law of the land”, and of how to use their valuable common law jury powers to redress the injuries they unnecessarily suffer because of the actions of the men and women who are the Actors who function as ‘persons’ pretending under presumption to fill the offices of government, but who, in reality and under fraud, function under color of law, identified as criminal activity, filling pretend offices in fictional entities – the corporate governments or ‘persons’. Sadly, today we blindly live in a pretend or fictional world constantly and unsuspectingly being injured by the people we pay to be our trustees and protectors.
The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were written by the same international elitists who ruled the people of the colonies as lords over serfs. The people’s uprising against the king’s men, the Masonic dirty church, rulers of the colonies was hijacked by those very same traitors making up the Masonic dirty church.
The failing of this country has been in allowing our uprisings, the Revolutionary War, the War of Northern Aggression, to be hijacked by the very oppressors that the people were rising up against, and then after victory is secured, not going back to finish the job.
The elites from the Revolutionary War era that we were brainwashed as children to worship, were the very same mother f#@kers that the common folk were rising up against in Lexington and Concord. Those who gathered in Pennsylvania in 1776 to declare themselves the new government were made up of the same people as, and the same as the old government, they were the merchants, the king’s men.
This may be our last chance, and make no mistake, once we the people are abused enough to rise up against this tyranny, right away those who have been cooperating with the treason while lying in the shadows will spring forth to declare themselves our leaders. This will be a crucial time and we must kill every mother f#@king one of them on the spot and to a man. They will offer us order and seek to press us into their service. We must choose a temporary chaos, which will cost more lives, but will be the only way to secure the Bill of Rights for all, as our natural leaders dedicated absolutely to our Bill of Rights will emerge from the chaos. And finally, after 250 years, we will have that which has been jerked out of our grasp every time we got close, a free America with the Bill of Rights as the absolute law for each and every one of us, without an aristocratic elitist class to begin stealing it away from us as soon as we have asserted our rights through our blood.