In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen ruling in June, some officials in a few states have opted to try to find creative new ways to circumvent this decision. New Jersey is one of the states that imposed new regulations to stop law-abiding citizens from carrying concealed, but a district judge recently ruled that it is, in fact, unconstitutional to bar people from exercising their constitutional rights just about everywhere.
U.S. District Court Judge Renée Marie Bumb issued a temporary restraining order to sections of the New Jersey law that could lead to “considerable constitutional problems.”
“The deprivation of plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights, as the holders of valid permits from the state to conceal carry handguns, constitutes irreparable injury, and neither the state nor the public has an interest in enforcing unconstitutional laws,” wrote Bumb in the 60-page decision, which also noted that the law “essentially renders the entire state of New Jersey a ‘sensitive place’ where firearms are prohibited.”
Though New York led the way in ignoring Bruen, its neighbor followed suit by passing A.4769, which effectively declared the entirety of the state to be a “sensitive place,” increased permit fees, used social-media profiles as grounds to subjectively deny gun permits, and required gun owners to acquire liability insurance that does not appear to exist in the state.
“While we are pleased that most of our concealed-carry law remains in effect, we are disappointed that a right-wing federal judge, without any serious justification, has chosen to invalidate common-sense restrictions around the right to carry a firearm in certain public spaces,” said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) spokesman Tyler Jones in a statement.
No, not “certain public spaces.” New Jersey’s law was written to ban citizens from carrying concealed just about anywhere they might go in public. Doing that is hardly “common sense.”
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