NJ Permit Transparency Bill Reintroduced

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Permit transparency in New Jersey sounds like a contradiction in terms, but there was actually a functioning dashboard tracking application data — until January 20th, when it apparently got quietly unplugged during the transition to a new administration.

"While the prior administration was producing some of this information, the Sherrill Administration is either dragging its feet or is choosing to sweep this under the rug."
— NRA-ILA

The part that should bother everyone — not just New Jersey residents — is what the data actually showed before it went dark. Black applicants were being denied at more than double the rate of white applicants, mostly for subjective reasons that Bruen already said aren't legitimate grounds for denial. That's not a statistical blip — that's a permitting system doing exactly what Bruen was supposed to stop.

The structural problem here is that Platkin's original directive was an administrative order, not a law. One new AG and it evaporates. A.222 would codify the reporting requirement so it can't just get shelved whenever the political winds shift. That's the whole point of the bill — you don't get to memory-hole data about constitutional rights violations just because a new administration finds it inconvenient.

For those of us in states with functioning shall-issue or constitutional carry, this might feel distant. But disparate denial rates based on subjective criteria in a permit system is the kind of thing that ends up cited in federal litigation that affects all of us.

Has anyone here dealt with permit transparency issues in Idaho — whether getting denial data, tracking processing times, or pushing back on a county sheriff dragging their feet on applications?

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Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett