Before the landmark 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, states like New York, New Jersey and California made it very difficult for lawful citizens to get a concealed carry permit. And while those states have continued to buck Bruen and tweak laws into more lax laws that are still unconstitutional, the effect of the decision can be seen in the explosion in concealed carry permit applications in New Jersey since then.
According to a recent article in the New Jersey Monitor, more than 41,000 New Jerseyans applied for carry permits in the two years since the Bruen decision. That number is more than 25-times the number of citizens—1,588—who applied for a permit in the two years prior to the court ruling.
According to the report, residents of Ocean, Monmouth and Bergen counties were the most numerous to apply, making up nearly 11,500 of all applications. Nonresidents applied for 1,989 permits—more than all applications submitted the two years before the ruling.
Breaking down the demographics, the newspaper reported that male applicants far outnumbered females, with totals of 38,500 and 2,800, respectively. The vast majority of the applicants were white, but 4,900 black applicants, 1,381 Hispanics and 1,017 Asian American Pacific Islanders also applied.
Of course, gun-ban groups and cynical gun-hating politicians were not about to cheer the fact that 2,500-times more New Jerseyans had applied to practice a right that shouldn’t have been so difficult to practice. And they are applauding the state’s continued effort to make applying for and being granted a permit even more difficult, including putting gun carry permit application data online for all to see.
“Since the Supreme Court’s misguided decision in Bruen, which lowered the bar for who can carry concealed handguns in public, New Jersey has seen a major increase in handgun carry permits,” Mary Kenah, policy counsel with so-called Everytown For Gun Safety, told the Monitor. “In response to this troubling increase, New Jersey lawmakers continue to push the envelope, enacting strong gun safety laws and implementing tools to keep our communities safe, especially as the Supreme Court’s decision has dangerously widened the list of public places where guns are now allowed.”
At the other end of the debate, state gun-rights organizations believe the number of applications will only continue to grow when ongoing lawsuits are finally decided in gun owners’ favor.
“When there is a final outcome to that litigation, I expect there will be another surge,” Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, told the Monitor. “There are people who just don’t want to go through the intrusion and the trouble for a permit that’s only good for two years until they can have full carry rights. There are a lot of people sitting on the sidelines waiting for the moment when unfettered carry permits will be issued.”
Read the full article here
