NJ Superior Court Ruling on Gun Permits

The ruling can be found here in PDF format. There’s a lot of things to say about it. For one, it gives you an idea of what one must go through to get all the required licenses to get a gun in New Jersey. It looks like the problem for this guy started when one of his references said something negative. Eventually they decided to go this route:

At the end of oral argument on the appeal, the trial court asked the parties whether they would have any objection to the court communicating directly with appellant’s former employers regarding his fitness to own a gun. The parties consented to this unusual procedure.

Apparently that didn’t go well for him either, as his previous associates said he was a nut job, and shouldn’t have a gun. This is a bad plaintiff to make a constitutional challenge, unfortunately, but probably the biggest risk to our gun rights is cases like this being moved forward. There are plenty of people that get kicked around by NJ’s system that would make far more sympathetic plaintiffs. But let’s get back to the case:

We conclude that the trial court’s conduct of the proceedings on the appeal from the denial of appellant’s application for a permit to purchase firearms did not conform with the requirements of procedural due process set forth in Weston. Therefore, the order affirming the denial of that application must be reversed and the matter remanded for a rehearing conducted in conformity with Weston.

So essentially the guy won, because the trial court did not follow the legal procedure in order to approve or deny permits. But the court also addressed the constitutional issued raised. The issue was one of vagueness, arguing that a previous New Jersey ruling upholding the “unfit persons” standard needed to be reconsidered in light of Heller.

However, the Court expressly indicated that its holding did not require invalidation of statutes that require a license to purchase or possess a firearm.

The Court did not require it because it was not at issue in the case. The New Jersey Superior Court has before it a direct challenge to an aspect of licensing. It’s not intellectually serious to so casually dismiss the constitutional issue, as if the Court in Heller had upheld licensing. Licensing wasn’t before that court, it is before this court. So you can’t act as if they upheld licensing. They did not.

The appellant in this case also challenged based on the time it took to issue a denial. Court in New Jersey have long held the statutory requirement that permit be issued within 30 days is effectively without meaning.

Moreover, we do not believe the Legislature could have intended that a person who is unfit to own a firearm would be able to obtain a firearms purchaser permit based on such an automatic approval. Our gun control laws have the purpose of “keeping firearms out of the hands of all dangerously unfit persons, noncriminal as well as criminal.” Burton v. Sills, supra, 53 N.J. at 94; see also Heller, supra, ___ U.S. at ___, 128 S. Ct. at 2816-17, 171 L. Ed. 2d at 678 (noting that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill”). This salutary purpose would be seriously undermined if a person could obtain a permit to purchase a firearm based solely on a court’s failure to conduct a hearing within the thirty-day period required by N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(d).

Except Heller does not support what you specifically mentioned New Jersey’s gun control laws were meant to do, which was “keeping firearms out of the hands of all dangerously unfit persons, noncriminal as well as criminal.” Heller didn’t say “longstanding prohibitions against on the possession of firearms by noncriminals the police say are dangerous.” There’s an element of having to be convicted or adjudicated in the Heller language, which this man was not.

Pretty clearly the Superior Court was not interested in taking Heller seriously, and I can’t say I’m surprised to see that kind of attitude coming out of a New Jersey court. New Jersey’s gun laws are a disaster for lawful gun owners, but the unfortunate thing for Garden State gunnies is there’s a lower hanging fruit out there. The real danger is that inexperienced people will begin challenging New Jersey laws immediately, before we’ve had a chance to get that low hanging fruit.  After which we’ll have more tools at our disposal to go after New Jersey’s permitting system, among other things.