The racist roots of gun control date back to postbellum United States. Laws and policies were enacted to keep black Americans from keeping and bearing arms. Almots 160 years later, New Jersey was one of the so-called “Bruen-affected” states that was forced into issuing concealed carry permits after the landmark ruling was handed down. Now a nonprofit named Rise Against Hate has released a study about permitting in the Garden State and it’s not good.
“Permit-to-Carry Outcomes In New Jersey: A County-Level Analysis (2019-2014)” went live on February 7, 2024. The data for the study is published by Harvard University and what the organization found is that systemic racism – in deep blue states like New Jersey – is still alive and well in their firearm permitting schemes.
The authors state in the overview that they have “uncovered significant findings, such as the statistical fact that Black individuals are 52.6 times more likely to be denied a permit compared to their White counterparts when adjusted for population size in Ocean County.” The study goes on to reveal that, “Across the state, Black individuals are 10.38 times more likely to be denied a permit compared to their White counterparts when adjusted for population size.”
Within the introduction to the study, Shooting News Weekly contributor, John Petrolino, was credited for his reporting prompting Rise Against Hate to take a closer look at the topic. Petrolino’s work on the racial bias issues in New Jersey permitting, as well as an overview of his correspondence with state officials on the topic, was covered in his 2024 Second Amendment Foundation Gun Rights Policy Conference presentation. A transcript of that presentation, as well as a video of it can be found HERE at SNW.
Rise Against Hate points out that post-Bruen, all issuing jurisdictions were supposed to adopt a “shall-issue” permitting system. This was clearly outlined in footnote 9 of the Bruen decision.
The Garden State promptly dropped the use of a “justifiable need” clause from the law on permitting on June 24, 2022. However, there remains a subjective avenue that’s still utilized in order to keep applicants from receiving a permit at the discretion of their issuing authority.
“Public Health, Safety, and Welfare,” was cited by Rise Against Hate, as the leading denial factor they found in examining application data. They state that “the reasoning from this category is based on the subjective discretion of the application investigator within the police department.”
“The stated reason for the denial is that ‘the person is found to be lacking the essential character of temperament necessary to be entrusted with a firearm,’” they explained. Criminal history or objectively defined statutory disqualifiers were not investigated in the study – only subjective criteria.
One of the requirements in order to apply for a New Jersey permit to carry is that an applicant must already have a firearm purchaser identification card. In order to get a card, applicants must also be approved under the same subjective “Public Health, Safety, and Welfare” standard.
Considering those facts, the study’s authors raised up a salient question:
As such, an interesting question to contemplate while considering the results of the data analysis is: why were certain individuals denied a permit to carry, particularly for the reason of Public Health, Safety, and Welfare, if they had already met the state’s standard when they had previously applied for a firearm identification card which has the same application criteria for a permit to carry.
After posing the above question, the study notes that, “An example that depicts the severity of this question is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s own experience with applying for a permit to carry. In 1956, after his house was fire-bombed, Dr. King applied to the local sheriff for a permit to carry a concealed handgun. He was denied on the grounds that he was ‘unsuitable.’”
When looking at the raw data in early 2024, Petrolino observed that the denial rate of black applicants over white was more than double. By September of that year, Petrolino found that the denial rate was 2.6 times more for blacks than whites when the subjective standard was used as a denial criteria.
After gathering all their data, Rise Against Hate used normalization techniques to come up with more accurate denial rates. After the normalization, Petrolino’s 2.6 times became 10.38 times.
From the summary of study’s findings . . .
Our findings clearly show that Black individuals are disproportionately denied permit to carry applications relative to their population size, with disproportionate ratios far exceeding 1 in many counties. This indicates a systemic disparity that could be indicative of racial bias in the permit approval process across New Jersey. …
Overall, the data demonstrates that even though Black individuals represent a smaller fraction of the population, they are denied permits to carry firearms at far higher rates than White individuals across New Jersey.
The counties with the most disproportionate denial ratio for blacks were Ocean, Gloucester, and Cumberland. Those rates are 52.6, 36.0, and 22.2 respectively.
The counties with the least disproportionate denial ratio for blacks were be Monmouth, Morris, Hunterdon, Warren, Sussex, Somerset, and Salem. Those counties all have a rate of zero. In other words, only seven out of the 21 counties in New Jersey exhibit racial equality in their carry permit denial rates.
Rise Against Hate executive director and the lead on the study, Benjamin Shore, cut directly at one of the core principles that anti-liberty politicians and so-called “leaders” tend to ignore. “Our findings are not just numbers—they represent real people systematically denied their constitutional rights based on race,” he said in a release. “Racial bias is embedded within the current permit-to-carry process.”
A number of different reforms were recommended by the group “including standardized, objective criteria for permit approvals, increased transparency in denial decisions, mandatory anti-bias training for law enforcement, and diversification of decision-making bodies.” Most notably they said that “all applicants are [to be] evaluated based on the same set of objective criteria.”
The state of New Jersey is going to have a hard time trying to explain the fact that blacks are denied carry permits more than 10 times more often than white. As for Ocean county, where blacks are denied more than 53 times as often, we look forward to their explanation.
According to Petrolino’s earlier reporting on the topic, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin has declined to comment – multiple times to multiple requests – when confronted with data.
“The office declines to comment.” – The Office of Attorney General Matthew Platkin, When Asked About Potential Racial Bias in the Denials of Permits to Carry [May 8, 2024]
How “Permit-to-Carry Outcomes In New Jersey: A County-Level Analysis (2019-2014)” is going to affect policy in New Jersey going forward — if at all — isn’t yet clear. We tip our cap to Petrolino for his investigations into the topic that prompted the study.
More information about Rise Against Hate and their organization can be found at: https://www.riseagainsthate.org/
Can’t wait till Debbie sees this
LOL