02-07-2025
New Jersey gun-rights advocates target racial disparities in carry permit denials
Gun instructor Tony Simon of Ewing runs The Second Is for Everyone diversity shoots at gun ranges around New Jersey. He said he found the firearms culture in New Jersey "ridiculously white" when he moved here from Virginia in 1993 and aims to change that. (Photo courtesy of Tony Simon)
Paterson police denied Mahmoud 'Mo' Ramadan's request for a gun carry permit after he hounded them — and the mayor — about their poky pace in processing his application. Sharon Palombi got denied in South Toms River because of her past police involvement as a crime victim. And Leonard Mirabal's extensive — but non-criminal — driving infractions prompted Carlstadt cops to refuse his carry request.
New Jersey law lays out several documentable reasons why police can deny carry permits, including if applicants have criminal convictions, histories of addiction or mental health disorders, or active restraining orders. But it also allows officers to make subjective judgments and reject applicants they deem lack 'the essential character of temperament necessary to be entrusted with a firearm.'
Consequently, a growing, disgruntled group of applicants — including Ramadan, Palombi, and Mirabal — have successfully challenged denials, which two recent studies found have disproportionately impacted people of color in New Jersey.
Now, a Republican state lawmaker wants police to answer to the Legislature and the public on the issue, by mandating monthly reporting on permit denials. Municipalities would have to publicly detail their reasons for denying firearm purchaser identification cards and gun carry permits under a bill Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R-Sussex) introduced Monday. The measure also would require reporting on the age, race, gender identity, and ethnicity of denied applicants.
'There are barriers to exercising your Second Amendment — prior felonies, mental health concerns — that are valid concerns. But the color of your skin is not a valid concern,' Fantasia said. 'There should be no subjective measures. When you allow subjective measures into the conversation, that leaves it up to people, to personalities, to preconceived notions, and to bias, and that's what we want to remove. There should never be bias associated with your ability to exercise a constitutional right.'
The attorney general's office already publicly reports applicant demographics but does no analysis of denials and attributes more than two thirds of them to unspecified 'public health, safety and welfare' concerns or just 'other disapproval reasons.'
John Petrolino, a firearms instructor and freelance writer who focuses on Second Amendment issues, dove into the data last year and found that Black applicants were denied permits for subjective reasons at twice the rate of whites.
Academic researchers with the nonprofit Rise Against Hate drilled deeper into the data and determined the denial disparities reflected 'major systemic issues,' given that people of color applying for carry permits passed the same initial screening requirements (to get firearm ID cards) as white carry applicants. Those researchers also found that denials disproportionately impacted Hispanic applicants too, and that disparities (for subjective and objective reasons) were worst in Ocean, Gloucester, and Cumberland counties.
They recommended policymakers mandate more detailed explanations for denials, anti-bias training for law enforcement officers overseeing permit decisions, and increased transparency to eliminate disparities they deemed systemic.
Spokespeople for the attorney general's office did not respond to a request for comment about racial disparities in denials.
Fantasia, a longtime gun owner and hunter, said she relies on firearms for protection, as both a single mother of three and someone who was held up at gunpoint at the fast-food restaurant where she worked when she was 17.
'Ever since then, it's always been imprinted in me,' Fantasia said of her enthusiasm for gun rights.
She has introduced other gun-related legislation in Trenton, including measures that would create Second Amendment license plates and allow school security officers with carry permits to take their guns onto school grounds and buildings.
She hasn't yet lined up a Senate sponsor for her bill to mandate public reporting on denials, but she thinks it should have broad, bipartisan appeal because it's about transparency and disparities.
'It really is an issue of: why are we discriminating?' she said.
The bill, which Assemblyman Bob Auth (R-Bergen) also signed on to sponsor, would require the state attorney general's office to report in detail on denials dating back to June 2022. That's when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling known as Bruen, declared gun owners have a constitutional right to carry guns, and states cannot require gun owners to prove a need to take firearms outside their homes or businesses.
Applications for carry permits have soared in New Jersey since Bruen, with police fielding almost 77,000 between Bruen and May 31, data shows. Less than 1,500 of them were for renewals; the rest were new applicants, the data shows. Four hundred applicants were denied.
The New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate is pushing for Fantasia's legislation, which has the same goals as a measure now stalled in Congress. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) introduced a bill in March that would mandate federal reporting on permit denials.
The syndicate endorsed Fantasia's reelection bid in May and named her Legislator of the Year.
Joe LoPorto, the group's director of legal operations, said Bruen was clear that subjective denials cannot stand.
'The whole point was to establish that law enforcement agencies couldn't arbitrarily decide who and who couldn't exercise their rights,' LoPorto said. 'For Second Amendment purposes, background checking should be straightforward. There really shouldn't be subjective standards at all, and we're not getting enough information on why these denials are coming out the way that they are.'
Ramadan seconded that sentiment, saying his fight isn't just one of principle. His permit denial kept him from landing a job in armed security, he said.
'I think the answer here is, literally, just follow what the Constitution says and stop trying to abuse your authority,' Ramadan said.
The bill is part of a widening strategy gun-rights groups have undertaken since Bruen to try to dismantle New Jersey's famously tough gun restrictions.
Gun owners challenged a state law Gov. Phil Murphy signed in December 2022, in response to Bruen, that barred guns from sensitive places like arenas, polling places and beaches, created new training requirements, and hiked permitting fees, among other things.
Nearly two years since lawyers argued the matter in court, the federal appellate court still has not issued its ruling. The law, though, largely remains on hold until the court challenge is resolved.
Gun owners have also taken their fight to municipal meetings around the state, lobbying local officials to give up the higher gun-permit fees state legislators mandated in the December 2022 law.
Englishtown and Franklin recently became the first towns statewide to authorize municipal officials to refund $150 — the local portion of permit fees — to applicants. LoPorto said officials in about a dozen other towns, including Park Ridge, Dumont, Absecon, and West Amwell, also are considering dropping the local fees.
'It's as much about providing relief for the residents of these towns as it is about sending that statewide message that this is fundamentally unfair,' LoPorto said of the push to eliminate such fees.
When Tony Simon moved to New Jersey from Virginia in 1993, he found the firearms culture here 'ridiculously white.'
Now Simon, a firearms instructor and military veteran who lives in Ewing, runs The Second Is for Everyone diversity shoots at gun ranges around the state to bring people into the gun community who have historically felt excluded.
The subjective judgments built into the gun permitting process in New Jersey ensure police will not enforce gun regulations equally, and denial disparities will persist, Simon said.
'I think it's a racist system,' he said. 'You go in. They say: 'Well why do you want a gun? Why do you need a gun?' They make it complicated. I've heard stories from people: 'They treated me like a criminal, an international drug dealer, a terrorist.' When you have rules like this, it's not going to be enforced in Berkeley Heights, in the high-end neighborhoods. It's going enforced on the poor people and the brown people.'
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