May 18, 2023
A federal judge in New Jersey on Tuesday granted a preliminary injunction in part against certain tenets in the Garden State’s revised gun permit law, Chapter 131, chalking up a win for the Second Amendment Foundation and its lawsuit partners.
In her meticulously-researched 235-page ruling, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Renee Marie Bumb writes, “The Constitution leaves the States some measures to combat handgun violence. But what the Second Amendment prohibits the States from doing, and what the State of New Jersey has done here with much of Chapter 131, is to ‘prevent law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.’ That is plainly unconstitutional.
“Bruen required the State to bring its firearm laws in compliance with the Second Amendment,” Judge Bumb adds. “Chapter 131 was the State’s response, but it went too far, becoming the kind of law that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson would have warned against since it ‘disarm[s] only those who are not inclined or determined to commit crimes [and] worsen[s] the plight of the assaulted, but improve[s] those of the assailants.’”
SAF is joined in this case by the Coalition of New Jersey Firearm Owners, New Jersey Second Amendment Society, Firearms Policy Coalition and three private citizens, Nicholas Gaudio, Jeffrey Muller and Ronald Koons, the latter for whom the case, Koons v. Platkin, is named. They are represented by attorney David Jensen of Beacon, N.Y.
“Judge Bumb’s ruling clearly recognizes the issues we raised with New Jersey’s restrictive gun law, and she’s fired a legal shot across the state’s bow,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “When New Jersey passed Chapter 131, it did away with the ‘justifiable need’ requirement but replaced it with an equally egregious ‘sensitive places’ restriction to effectively prohibit carrying a legally-licensed handgun anywhere in the state. That just doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Adam Kraut, SAF’s executive director, and a practicing attorney, agreed, stating, “Today’s order granting our preliminary injunction against the State of New Jersey’s anti-carry law reaffirms that the rule of law is alive and well. After the Supreme Court decided Bruen last summer, the State of New Jersey enacted a series of restrictions that were wholly incompatible with the Constitution and disregarded the Supreme Court’s directive. It is unfortunate that a lawsuit was required in order to force the State to respect its residents’ constitutional right to bear arms. We look forward to continuing to litigate these issues in New Jersey, and across the nation, to ensure constitutional rights are not meaningless words on paper.”