Following a New Jersey Senate gun-control hearing, the mike was left open, and three anti-gun state Senators waded in feet first.

A recording of the post-game chat has been picked up by the Newark Star-Ledger, a reliably liberal paper:

As a committee hearing on new gun-control legislation began winding down Thursday, three state senators started chatting amongst themselves.

What they didn't realize was the microphone was still on.

A recording of the exchange -- which appears to be between Democrats Loretta Weinberg, Sandra Cunningham and Linda Greenstein -- ended up on youtube.com...

The recording opens with what sounds like a senator or staff member saying, "We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate"...

"They want to keep the guns out of the hands of the bad guys, but they don't have any regulations to do it," Weinberg then says, more audibly.

One of the senators, who sounds like Cunningham, responds: "They don't care about the bad guys. All they want to do is have their little guns and do whatever they want with them."

"That's the line they've developed," another, who sounds like Greenstein, says.

Needless to say, New Jersey gun rights supporters are outraged, with Scott Bach, president of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC), the NRA chapter in New Jersey, remarking that "the really troubling aspect" is that

...these extremists are the people the Senate president is listening to right now.  It needs to be understood that this is an extremist agenda that should not be moving.

The ANJRPC web site further observes:

The discussion reveals absolute contempt for the Second Amendment and those who exercise it, as well as complete ignorance of the fact that gun rights organizations like ANJRPC have long advocated for clear and specific legislation punishing criminals who misuse firearms...

New Jersey gun owners have been pushing back valiantly against a flood of anti-gun bills, fighting against the odds to avoid the recent fates of law-abiding gun owners in New York and Connecticut.

In February, the state Assembly passed 22 anti-gun bills, and the Senate is poised to vote on six bills on Monday, including measures to ban .50 caliber rifles and to create an electronic gun permit system requiring 4-year renewals and encoding gun permit information on driver's licenses.

New Jersey's already has a so-called assault weapons ban, and the state has had a 15-round magazine limit for some 20 years.  With the Democratic Senate Majority leader, Stephen M. Sweeney, hailing from a more rural county, he has so far resisted the Assembly's call for a 10-round limit.

Further tempering the ultimate legislative product is the will of Governor Chris Christie, who has issued only a general statement on "gun control and violence prevention," and who remains the wild card in the ultimate fate of New Jersey gun owners.

In a fluid situation that will eventually require compromise between the two legislative bodies, various provisions are being added at the last minute to the anti-gun legislative package, including this:

...the system would allow police to bar people from buying guns based on up-to-the-minute information, such as a call to someone's house for a domestic-violence complaint, even if charges are not filed.

On other words if the local or state police, or anyone else written into the final law, has a suspicion, hunch, or, perhaps, a dispute, concerning an otherwise law-abiding citizen, that citizen's Second Amendment rights can be summarily revoked without due process.

As the road sign at the entrance to the Garden State Parkway says, "Welcome to New Jersey."