New Jersey is no friend of the Second Amendment. Democratic Governor Phil Murphy has shown nothing but contempt for gun owners and the Second Amendment since taking office. One of the things that was uncovered and reported on quite a bit is that under Murphy’s administration, Blacks are denied permits to carry at a rate more than double their white counterparts. Those denials are predicated on an illegal subjective standard, not because of some sort of criminal history. Murphy’s office has been contacted repeatedly about this and has failed to comment.

After diving into data provided by the Attorney General’s office, it was found that a number of unconstitutional and questionable practices seem to be occurring under Murphy’s leadership; including excessive wait times for the issuance of permits to carry, subjective standards that made up a majority of permit denials, and apparent racial bias that appears to be proliferating in some jurisdictions.

Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s office and the attorney general directly have been contacted multiple times about the racial bias and permitting abuses. Aside from “no comment,” Platkin has not taken a stance on the damning evidence that such infringements are occurring. If anything, he may be complicit with the subversion of these rights.

The entire New Jersey legislative body has also been contacted about some of these abuses. Responses to correspondence have been met with single digit numbers, all of which went nowhere.

Governor Phil Murphy’s office hasn't seen fit to respond either. Murphy’s office was contacted on three occasions via email through four of his press contacts each time. The following staffers did not seem it fitting to reply to requests for comment: Tyler Jones, Kiran Sheth, Toral Patel, and Jennifer Sciortino.

After receiving no replies from the emails, a letter dated June 25, 2024 was sent via U.S. Post directly to Governor Phil Murphy.

Attention Governor Murphy:

Please find enclosed emails – which have gone ignored (this is very disrespectful) – I’ve sent to your staffers seeking comment on some information that I’ve uncovered in my research. Also find enclosed my findings.

I’m seeking a comment and commitment from you.

Please comment on the racial bias that’s being allowed to occur in N.J.’s permitting scheme for firearms permits under your leadership.

Further, I’d like a commitment from you that you’ll see to it that this statute is no longer enforced, as it’s being used disproportionately against Black individuals. Please also urge the legislature to repeal 2C:58-3c.(5) and enact those measures via your pen.

The letter ended with a request that Murphy respond via email.

While the letter is less than sugary, and we all know that honey will attract more flies, let’s be honest…what’s the over/under on whether or not Murphy would respond regardless? The outcome was what you’d suspect.

It’s been just shy of two months since that post letter was sent to the governor and I've yet to see a reply. There have been no email responses to the original emails to Murphy’s staffers nor any singular reply to the letter sent via post. There has been no correspondence sent to the return address on the letter to Murphy.

Governor Phil Murphy has been put on notice several times that there’s racial bias occurring in the New Jersey permit-to-carry application system and is doing nothing about it. Murphy is allowing the systemic racism of New Jersey’s laws to negatively affect Black applicants. 

To make matters worse, the statute that’s being used subjectively to deny the rights of Blacks disproportionately was changed in 2022. Murphy signed into law provisions that gave even more discretion to issuing authorities to choose who may or may not be granted a N.J. permit to carry. As we all know, subjective standards were ruled unconstitutional in the NYSRPA v. Bruen decision.

The law was bad prior to Murphy having it changed, and now it’s even worse.

Governor Phil Murphy’s negligence to the situation or ignoring the correspondence will not make the problem just go away. Eventually both Governor Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matthew Platkin are going to have to answer for why these practices are occurring under this administration. It’s not going to look very good considering they’ve all been put on notice and cannot say they don’t know about it.

Will Murphy or Platkin “man up” and act with integrity on this topic? It’s doubtful. If there’s some public pressure, eventually they’ll have to address the issues. But it’s not likely there’s enough moral fortitude at Drumthwacket for anyone to do the right thing just because….

If you’d like to ask the Governor yourself why these practices are occurring, he can be reached via Email HERE or via Post at: Governor Phil Murphy, The State House, P.O. Box 001, Trenton NJ 08625. And of course there’s the platform formerly known as Twitter, or X, and Murphy can be found @GovMurphy.