The Justice Department's Second Amendment Section of the Civil Rights Division is now turning its attention to the Connecticut towns of Middletown and Waterbury, after allegations of extensive permitting delays in the communities.
The DOJ's announcement comes on the heels of the launch of another investigation into the permitting practices in Pennsauken, New Jersey. In a press release, the Civil Rights Division alleged that residents of the two Connecticut towns are facing a "potentially years-long appeal process to exercise this fundamental right."
“All law-abiding Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms for self‑defense,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This right is not a luxury reserved for a privileged few, but a fundamental liberty for all, including the residents of Middletown and Waterbury, Connecticut.”
While the DOJ's press release doesn't contain any details about alleged delays, commenters on the subreddit CTGuns have shared their frustrations over the past couple of years. In one thread, for instance, several users complained about the Waterbury Police Department taking six to nine months to process permit applications.
Under Connecticut law, these applications are supposed to be approved or denied within eight weeks, so we're not talking about the department missing the deadline by a day or two.
It's also worth noting that during the September meeting of the Office of Government Accountability's Board of Firearms Permit Examiners, the board overturned the denials of two applications from Waterbury residents (while upholding the denial of a third). Those were the only successful appeals of the 16 cases heard by the board last month, and while that's not proof of any wrongdoing on the part of the department it's an intriguing data point at the very least.
I haven't been able to find many complaints about Middletown's permitting process. In fact, in the Reddit discussion about the DOJ's new investigation, a couple of users reported getting their permits within the eight week window, and one described the police chief as "incredibly helpful," though they did also say their application was processed several years ago.
Of course, just because gun owners haven't been complaining about Middletown's permitting process on Reddit doesn't mean that everything is running smoothly. The DOJ presumably has received complaints or uncovered evidence that prompted its investigation, and I'm curious to learn more about the specific allegations involving both departments.
What we do know is that Connecticut's permit appeals system has been a mess for years. A state audit released last year found more than 1,200 appeals awaiting hearings as of March 2024, including 590 appeals of permit denials and another 613 appeals of permit revocations. At the time, some applicants were being scheduled for hearings as far out as February 2027.
A three-year wait is excessively long, in my opinion, especially when we're talking about the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right.
The Supreme Court made clear in Bruen that shall-issue licensing systems aren't necessarily unconstitutional, but it also warned that lengthy wait times and excessive fees could run afoul of the Second Amendment. That warning doesn't mean much, though, if local officials can ignore statutory deadlines without consequence.
Connecticut's Democrat Attorney General William Tong doesn't seem interested in investigating these delays, so I'm glad to see the Justice Department taking these allegations seriously. I hope its investigation sheds some light on just how widespread the problem is in Middletown and Waterbury.
If officials have been treating an eight-week deadline as nothing more than a suggestion, then accountability is long overdue. A constitutional right shouldn't depend on how quickly a police department gets around to processing the paperwork, and it shouldn't be kept in limbo by an appeals process that takes years to deliver an answer.