DOJ Sues Minnesota Over Gun Permits

The Department of Justice sued Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul on September 24, arguing the state's firearm purchase permit requirement and its 30-day (often 60-day) waiting period are unconstitutional.

State of play: Minnesota has required a purchase permit since 1977, with the rules tightened repeatedly since — most recently in 2025. In 2023, lawmakers stretched the waiting window from seven days to 30. The DOJ says that's just the number on paper; Minneapolis and St. Paul police routinely blow past it, with 60-day waits "not uncommon" for law-abiding buyers who've already cleared a background check.

This isn't the DOJ's first swing at a city over permit abuse. In June, the department opened a civil rights investigation into Philadelphia's carry permit practices, alleging the city revoked permits under vague "good cause" standards instead of clear, objective criteria. The Minnesota suit goes further — it's not an investigation, it's litigation, and it targets the purchase process itself, not just carry.

What they're saying:

• Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon: law-abiding citizens "do not need government permission to purchase a firearm," and a 60-day wait after passing a background check is "intolerable under the Constitution."
• U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen: the office will "not tolerate procedures that are wielded in a way that impairs" the right to buy a gun.
• Minnesota's attorney general's office called the suit an attack on "common-sense background check laws" passed democratically, and said the DOJ is trying to "make Minnesota less safe."

"The Supreme Court held that the home is where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. When a person needs to defend their home, they need to defend it now, not thirty to sixty days from now." — Harmeet Dhillon

Zoom in: The DOJ's filing leans on the 2015 murder of Carol Bowne, a New Jersey woman killed by an abusive ex 42 days into a 30-day permit wait, despite an active restraining order against him. The parallel is blunt: a permit delay doesn't just inconvenience buyers, it can leave them unarmed at the exact moment they need a gun most. Minnesota exempts carry-permit holders from the purchase permit requirement, but only about 8.2% of the state's adults hold one — leaving roughly 4.2 million residents subject to the wait.

Yes, but: The legal road isn't clear. NYSRPA v. Bruen explicitly declined to strike down "shall-issue" licensing schemes, while leaving the door open to challenges where "lengthy wait times" or "exorbitant fees" functionally deny the right. Minnesota sits in the Eighth Circuit, which has no strong track record either way on Second Amendment cases — not the friendly terrain of the Fifth Circuit, but not the hostile ground of the Ninth or Seventh either.

What's next: Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul will have to answer the complaint, and expect the state's defense to center on Bruen's carve-out for shall-issue systems. A ruling against Minnesota's permit-and-wait structure would hand gun owners their strongest precedent yet against purchase permits nationwide — and give every other permit-to-purchase state reason to worry.