New Jersey residents suffer under some of the most restrictive and unconstitutional gun control laws in the country. However, it’s against this oppressive backdrop that an unlikely but powerful grassroots movement has been born, as citizens fight against tyranny to restore their civil liberties.
More than any other state, grassroots efforts in New Jersey are having a material and measurable impact, as we have extensively covered. One such example is the effort to rebate permit fees at the municipal level, with 14 towns participating so far.
One less conspicuous but potentially more impactful effort was born from the actions of an individual responding to New Jersey’s severe delays in issuing carry permits subsequent to the 2022 Bruen Supreme Court decision. In numerous instances, individuals were experiencing delays of many months and sometimes half a year or more, as compared to the statutory requirement to issue a permit within 30 days.
Second Amendment rights activist and historian, Jay Factor, conceived the idea in 2022, helping to pen more than 350 “Shuttlesworth letters” that expedited the issuance of severely delayed permits by putting administrators, prosecutors, police chiefs, judges, and mayors on notice, documenting the permit status as compared to the statute.
“The Shuttlesworth letter explains the ‘definite standards’ in Bruen’s footnote 9, citing the 1969 case of Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, reinforcing to the recipient that it sets New Jersey’s 30-day issuance requirement (2C:58-3) in stone,” explained Mr. Factor, whose personal efforts helped hundreds of New Jersey residents obtain their permit to carry, including the first beneficiary, Mark Cheeseman, the founder of the grassroots gun rights group, New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate, and the plaintiff for whom the New Jersey AWB / Mag ban case is named, Cheeseman v. Platkin.
(The Shuttleworth letter takes its name from Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, an American Baptist minister and civil rights advocate who was convicted of leading a parade in Birmingham, Alabama, without a permit. In the ensuing legal fight that eventually reached the Supreme Court, the court ruled that permitting schemes must be objective and nondiscretionary. Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in Bruen cited this case.)
Today, the Shuttlesworth letters are administered in a more efficient process through the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate, of which Mr. Factor is a founding member. The group vets online requests by members wishing to address permitting delays and then assists them in formulating a letter they are responsible for sending with a request for a return receipt. (The service is only available to members of NJFOS, and conditions apply. To join NJFOS, visit this page.)
Gun owners in New Jersey have noted across forums and social media that delays in issuing permits are starting to tick back up. The Shuttlesworth letters have remained effective against errant police departments, as noted by one member of a private social media group:
My permits were received in my email today at 4am. After waiting over 90 & 60 days respectively. I sent out all of the Shuttlesworth letters to their recipients on Thursday of last week. I got a call from the head of firearms at my local Police Department yesterday morning. They had their excuses which I won’t get into but regardless, on the phone call they said I would be receiving my permits today and that’s exactly what happened.
Shuttlesworth Letters As Evidence to Challenge NJ’s Permitting Scheme
Today, this body of work takes on even more significance as it represents a treasure trove of data, evidencing a broad, systematic, built-in, and unconstitutional delay in New Jersey’s shall-issue permitting scheme.
Even more importantly, that same body of evidence is accumulating in the offices of appellate judges who have received certified copies of the letters – judges who will very likely hear a case addressing state-level permit delays at some point. Copies of letters have also been shared with Department of Justice leadership, which is now turning its focus toward the subject of state-level permitting schemes and delays.
On September 30, the DOJ Civil Rights Division’s new Second Amendment Section, led by Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, filed its first affirmative lawsuit addressing permitting delays against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD). Just yesterday, on December 16, the DOJ – again under Ms. Dhillon’s leadership – initiated another complaint on the same issue, this time against the U.S. Virgin Islands.
It’s notable that the VI case falls under the jurisdiction of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals – the same district in which New Jersey resides. Should either of the DOJ cases above yield decisions that strike down unconstitutional permitting schemes, those cases will serve as strong precedent against New Jersey. And, according to our sources, it’s only a matter of time until such a complaint is brought. The growing mountain of evidence represented in the Shuttlesworth letters will provide incredibly damning evidence against the state in a court challenge.
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