These bad guys got out, yet AG wants automatic jail for simple gun offenses

New Jersey recently underwent bail changes that have left a lot of people scratching their heads. The idea was simple enough. Non-violent offenses committed by people who are too broke to afford bail shouldn't mean you spend months in jail, and violent offenders who pose a real threat could be denied bail and remain in jail where they belong.

Simple enough, but now the state's Attorney General Chris Porrino already wants to make changes to the law. He had his Criminal Justice director Elie Honig send a letter to the acting administrative director of the courts to request people accused of criminal possession of a gun remain jailed until trial. Keep in mind this is simply having a gun when New Jersey says you shouldn't. It doesn't need to mean using a gun, threatening to use a gun, or brandishing a gun.

This would include people like Shaneen Allen, the Philadelphia mother of two who's experience as a crime victim led her to secure a legal weapon in Pennsylvania, then mistakenly brought it into Atlantic City. She threatened no one, and in a traffic stop immediately and respectfully informed police she had a legal permit from Pennsylvania and had the gun in her car. She was eventually pardoned by Governor Christie, yet under the AG's request she would not have remained free while awaiting trial with the unlawful possession of a firearm charge hanging over her.

This would also include people like Carlo Bellario, a standup comic and aspiring actor from New Jersey who made the mistake of taking an acting job and not questioning the producers of the film that they had obtained proper permits. It was a street scene where he was filmed with what he naturally assumed was a Hollywood prop gun. Turns out the producers handed him a pellet gun, which under New Jersey law is treated the same as any other gun. For taking an acting job, Carlo faced 15 to 30 years in prison because of decades old priors. Now a family man with a bright career in front of him, he thought about rolling the dice and going to trial but in the end chose a deal that put him on probation. This man would have been locked up for many, many months under the AG's request to deny bail for gun possession charges.

Yet under Jersey's bail reform, who has been allowed out?

A former military police officer at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst who moved to Connecticut after a 2015 road rage allegation. She was indicted on two counts of second-degree manslaughter for allegedly running two people off the road.

An Ocean County resident who is facing charges that he tried to trade a video game for sex with a 12-year-old girl. His record includes a juvenile conviction for sexual assault on a minor.

Two men from Paterson who led police on a high-speed chase along three highways before slamming into a police car on Route 80.

An accused drug dealer who police in Toms River say was in possession of about 1,850 doses of heroin.

Were Carlo Bellario and Shaneen Allen actually more of a public threat than these creeps? We are almost apoplectic in our anti-gun emotion here in this state and it needs to stop.