Bearing Arms contributor John Petrolino has been documenting the many issues with New Jersey's post-Bruen carry regime for months now, from the number of denials based on subjective standards (a no-no, according to the Supreme Court) to the excessive wait times many applicants are forced to endure. 

In May 2024 John revealed that Black applicants for a carry permit were more than twice as likely to be denied as their white counterparts; a revelation that caught the attention of researchers at Rise Against Hate, who decided to dig into the data on their own. After months of research the group has released their study on permit-to-carry application outcomes, and they too found "significant racial disparities" in permit denials. In fact, the disparities appear to be even worse than what Petrolino was able to document. 

According to Rise Against Hate's data, Black applicants are more than ten times as likely to be denied a permit to carry than white applicants. While some counties appear to be issuing permits in a colorblind or racially neutral fashion, the disparities are immense in places like Ocean County, where white applicants are 50 times more likely to be approved for a permit compared to Black applicants. 

The study's authors say the "primary concern for biased or potentially prejudiced results is with the denial category of 'Public Health, Safety, and Welfare', as the reasoning for 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." This denial reason refers to the applicant's "essential character of temperament" or "good character" or lack thereof with regards to gun ownership and considers whether granting the individual a permit to carry would or would not be in the best interest of public safety. Footnote 9 of Bruen specifies that licensing criteria must be objective across all applicants, however, some New Jersey police departments admit that "good character" is a "subjective standard". The standards illustrate the level of subjectivity that is up to the discretion of the police, which leaves room for bias and personal judgements to affect these subjective standards." 

The researchers found that 90 Black and Hispanic applicants across the state were denied permits under the Public Health, Safety, and Welfare category, compared to just 45 white applicants. That figure is "alarming" to Rise Against Hate, given that most New Jersey counties (and the state overall) is majority white. 

As the authors point out, a New Jersey resident can only apply for a carry permit after they've been approved for a Firearm ID card. Why then, they wonder, were certain individuals denied a permit to carry, particularly for reasons of public health, safety, and welfare, when they've already met the state's standard for purchasing and possessing a gun in the home? 

It's a great question as well as an easy way of proving that New Jersey's carry regime is still operating in a fashion the Supreme Court has deemed an affront to our Second Amendment rights. 

Kudos to John Petrolino for his initial investigation into how New Jersey's carry permits are being issued, as well as to the Rise Against Hate researchers for doing their own deep data dive that confirmed Petrolino's initial findings. I encourage you to read the study for yourself, but I'll also be talking with Ben Shore, who was the lead researcher in Rise Against Hate's study, on Monday's Bearing Arms' Cam & Co. It promises to be a very interesting and enlightening conversation about the bias that appears to be having a major effect on who gets to exercise their Second Amendment rights in the Garden State, as well as what can be done to level the playing field.