A New Jersey man and two gun rights groups are claiming that state and local officials use New Jersey law to violate residents’ 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 New Jersey 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 that 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 his or her permit, that person 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
The plaintiffs call New Jersey an “outlier” when it comes to firearms law. Only “approximately seven” states require a permit to purchase a gun, and 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 whether gun regulation was constitutional.
Under that test, the courts considered a law’s expected benefit rather than its effect on individual rights. But in Bruen, a 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.
