Bearing Arms contributor and investigative journalist John Petrolino has been doing a deep dive on New Jersey right to carry data ever since the Bruen decision forced the Garden State to adopt a "shall issue" permitting system. Using public record requests and and available public data, he's uncovered the fact that, even under the "shall issue" regime, there appears to be rampant racial discrimination when it comes to the approval and denial of carry permit applications.
Petrolino has been trying to get more information about permit data for retired law enforcement in the Garden State, but he's run into a roadblock, with the State Police denying his records request. Now Petrolino is suing the New Jersey State Police as well as "Trooper X"; the unknown employee who refused to hand over the information requested.
From the complaint filed in New Jersey Superior Court in Mercer County:
Retired police officers are eligible for a special program to carry handguns, different and perhaps less stringent than the scheme available to the general public. There is no statistical or dataset breakdown for approval/denial rates and demographics of the carry permit holders that are retired law enforcement officers.
On January 27, 2026 Plaintiff submitted an OPRA request to the Defendants through their online portal/OPRA submission form.......
On February 5, 2026 Plaintiff received a denial of his OPRA request from Defendant NJSP prepared by an unknown records custodian designated as “Trooper X” in this filing.
The Defendants denied Plaintiff access to the records, contending that N.J.A.C. 13:54-1.15 “limited release firearms information to a person acting in his/her official government capacity for the purpose of the administration of justice”.
Specifically, Petrolino was asking for copies of all "Initial Application For a Retired Law Enforcement Officer Permit to Carry a Handgun" filed in 2024 and 2025, as well as copies of all "Renewal Application for Retired Law Enforcement Officer Permit to Carry a Handgun" filed in 2024, 2025 and 2026 through the date of the State Police response. Petrolino ackowledged that the personal information contained in these documents could and would be redacted, and explicitly informed the State Police he was only seeking "the demographic information of COUNTY, SEX and RACE and whether the renewal was APPROVED or DISAPPROVED."
In fact, Petrolino said that in lieu of the actual redacted applications, he was willing to accept "any record or official information breakdown that outlines the parameters above such as a spreadsheet or list(s)."
That didn't matter to "Trooper X", who informed Petrolino via email on February 13 that the State’s interest outweighs the public’s right to disclosure.
.....As noted in the original response, the records you seek fall within a category of documents that are confidential by regulation. Under New Jersey Administrative Code 13:54-1.15, applications for firearms permits and documents reflecting the issuance or denial of those permits are not public records and may only be released to persons acting in a governmental capacity for purposes of the administration of justice. This exemption applies to the applications as a class of records.
Redacting personal identifiers does not change the legal status of those documents or permit their disclosure.
Your request also invoked the common law right of access. We have also considered your request under the common law right of access and conducted the required balancing of interests. While we recognize your journalistic interest in demographic information, the State’s interest in maintaining the confidentiality of firearms permitting records outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
Additionally, OPRA does not require the agency to create a new record or compile data in a format that does not already exist.
For these reasons, the denial of request W247590 is affirmed.
Petrolino's suit contends that the State Police are failing to abide by New Jersey's Open Public Records Act by not having a designated and identifiable Records Custodian, that the government's interest in protecting this demographic information is outweighed by the public's right to know about the "relationship between the demographics of carry permit holders amongst the general public and retired law enforcement officers including but not limited to county location, race, sex and the effect of potentially disqualifying criteria in the application population as well as the success rate for the appeal process within the New Jersey State Police."
Petrolino is seeking the disclosure of this information, as well as attorneys' fees and any other relief "the Court deems fair, equitable and necessary."
This seems like a very reasonable request to me, and I'm hoping that one day soon Bearing Arms will be able to publish Petrolino's findings once the data has been handed over. It's sad that it's gotten to the point that he's had to file a lawsuit, but as he told the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (where both he and I serve as unpaid members of the Board of Directors), he's been denied "countless records requests" that he's made over the years, with the New Jersey State Police "never fulfilling even one."
In the CCRKBA press release, Executive Director Alan Gottlieb noted that “records concerning the retired police officer permits are about as public as you can get."
Do they have the same level of perceived bias in their permitting statistics? Or perhaps worse yet, do they not? The public has a right to know this information. We laud Director Petrolino in his quest to hold New Jersey officials accountable by forcing them to be transparent with those they swore to serve.
I too applaud John's efforts and we'll be following this lawsuit as it progresses. The public does have a right to know whether retired law enforcement are being approved or denied at roughly the same rate as the general public, as well as if the racial discrimination that appears to be taking place in some New Jersey counties extends to retired police officers applying for a permit as well. This information should be available to any interested member of the public, including journalists like Petrolino, and it's in the public's best interest (and the interest of good government) that this data is released as soon as possible.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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