A New Jersey man and two gun rights groups are claiming that state and local officials use the law to violate New Jerseyans’ Second Amendment rights.
Christian Benton of Pennsauken, New Jersey, along with the Coalition of New Jersey Firearm Owners and the Gun Owners Foundation, filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Pennsauken Police Chief Phil Olivo in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Under New Jersey law, a permit is required to buy a gun and a separate license is needed to carry a firearm.
According to the lawsuit, the processes are redundant and cumbersome, requiring training, multiple background checks, character references, interviews with officials, fingerprinting, and registering of firearms, as well as hundreds of dollars in fees.
“In summary, in order to simply carry a handgun for self-defense in New Jersey, one can expect to wait months and months, at a cost of approximately $500,” the lawsuit states.
Each handgun purchase requires a separate purchase permit. The lawsuit also accuses Mr. Olivo—and others—of slow-walking permit applications, further limiting the number of firearms that can be purchased under New Jersey’s “one-gun-a-month” law.
The plaintiffs claim the system creates an environment in which the mere possession of a gun, a right guaranteed under the Second Amendment, makes one guilty of a crime. In addition, carry permits are issued for specific firearms. If a person is carrying a gun not listed on their permit, he or she can be charged with a crime.
Mr. Platkin’s office declined to comment on the case in an email to The Epoch Times.
Mr. Olivo declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit. He said that police chiefs have little discretion when it comes to approving licenses or permits. The criteria for each permit are laid out in New Jersey statute 2c-58-3, which provides recourse for those denied a permit.
“If (an application) is disapproved, they can get a hearing with a superior court judge,” Mr. Olivo told The Epoch Times.
An ‘Outlier’ State
They call New Jersey an “outlier” when it comes to firearms law. Only seven states require a permit to purchase a gun, while 40 states allow permitless carry, the lawsuit states.
In Heller, the court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. In Bruen, the court ruled that citizens have a constitutional right to carry a gun in public for self defense and do not have to show a “special need.” The court scrapped a two-step means test that courts had been using to determine if gun regulation was constitutional.
Under that test, the courts considered a law’s expected benefit rather than its impact on individual rights. But in Bruen, the majority of the Supreme Court Justices said laws must consider “history and tradition.”
The court ruled that if the law fits within the plain text of the Constitution and is in line with the law at the time the amendment was written, then it is Constitutional.
The plaintiffs point out that there were no licensing or permitting regimes in 1791 when the Second Amendment was ratified. So, under Bruen, such systems are unconstitutional.
“We’re very optimistic that this case will eventually be the means by which we finally dismantle New Jersey’s unconstitutional permitting policies and liberate their citizens from their anti-gun tyranny,” Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, wrote in a statement online.
