A gun rights advocate has sued the New Jersey State Police for refusing to release anonymized records on how many retired law enforcement officers have gun carry permits.
John Petrolino, a firearms instructor and writer who focuses on Second Amendment issues, wants the data to see both how many retired officers are licensed to carry and if racial disparities he discovered among civilian applicants who were denied carry permits extend to retired officers too.
“This is like a sunshine-related topic to me. It paints a picture of who is and isn’t taking advantage of these types of permits. Right now, we don’t have a full picture of the number of permit-to-carry holders in the state,” Petrolino said. “This should be public record, period. Why are we hiding this stuff that’s no different than how many driver’s licenses — or liquor licenses or anything else — there are?”
In 2023, former Attorney General Matt Platkin ordered police departments statewide to submit carry permit application data including demographics to the state police, and the state launched a publicly accessible, searchable website in March 2024.
The data there shows police have fielded 99,689 carry applications, approving all but 481, since December 2019. Applications spiked after June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court in a ruling known as Bruen declared that gun owners have a constitutional right to carry guns and states cannot require gun owners to prove a need to take firearms outside their homes or businesses.
The number of civilians with active carry permits likely is lower than 99,689, though, because permits are valid for two years and the dashboard doesn’t show how many permits expired since 2019.
The dashboard also does not show how many retired officers have carry permits — but it’s likely in the thousands, given that the New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association, the state’s largest police union, has said it represents about 17,000 retired officers.
Retired officers don’t need a separate license to carry a concealed gun because the federal Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2004 gives them that right, and federal courts have backed it. But a New Jersey state law expands retired officers’ carry rights — allowing things like open carry and carrying hollow-point ammunition and higher-capacity magazines — if they get a special “retired police officers permit” that has an age cap and qualification requirements.
The state’s carry permit website had not been updated since Platkin and former Gov. Phil Murphy left office in January — until Friday, after the New Jersey Monitor asked the attorney general’s office about it and the National Rifle Association issued a statement complaining about it. The NRA accused Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration of “either dragging its feet or … choosing to sweep this under the rug” and urged supporters to press legislators to pass a bill now in the Statehouse that would codify public reporting on permit data and applicant demographics.
The carry-permit website is one of about a dozen where the state publicly reports everything from shootings, bias incidents, and traffic accidents to police discipline, officer diversity, and civil asset forfeitures. On some of those sites, the reporting appears to be months to a year or more behind, but Michael Symons, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said they all remain active, with updating occurring monthly, quarterly, or annually.
New Jersey has gotten a new attorney general, Jen Davenport, and state police superintendent, Lt. Col. Jeanne Hengemuhle, since Sherrill took office in January. Symons referred further questions to the state police, whose spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment. Sherrill’s spokespeople also did not comment.
Petrolino filed records requests in January with both the state police and the attorney general’s office for deidentified data and demographics dating back to 2024 about retired officers who applied for and got or were denied permits.
Both agencies rejected his requests, with the state police telling Petrolino last month that state law bars them from releasing firearm applications and background investigations into applicants to anyone other than law enforcement. That law, though, does not prohibit the public reporting of anonymized data.
Petrolino wants a state judge to order the state police to release that data, saying their refusals violate the Open Public Records Act, the common law right of access (which favors disclosure when information serves the public interest), and his civil rights because of the agency’s “perfunctory lack of analysis” in its records denial.
A decision will be issued on April 28, according to the court docket.
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