New Jersey isn't friendly to gun ownership at all, which means they have to be watched like hawks to make sure they don't cross the current lines. It's bad enough they get away with what they do on the right to keep and bear arms, but if they're not kept it check, they'll take it even farther.
So, some people like to use the open records laws to see what they're really up to.
John Petrolino, a gun rights advocate and fellow regular contributor at our sister site, Bearing Arms, does that on a regular basis. He's been looking at how the state does a number of things.
Late in 2025, Petrolino started looking at permits issued to retired law enforcement officers. As he's looking at permitting as a whole, it makes sense to see how many the state has issued to retiring cops. There's no issue with them getting permits, mind you; Petrolino just wanted to know how many, and as New Jersey publishes numbers of permits excluding those in particular, it means they should have some record of how many such permits are issued.
And New Jersey refused to answer.
Now, with the help of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, of which Petrolino is a board member, he's suing them over their refusal to provide the information.
From a press release:
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today announced that Board of Directors member and journalist John Petrolino has filed a suit against New Jersey officials over repeat records request denials. While CCRKBA is not a party to this case, we stand by Director Petrolino as he works to increase transparency in the Garden State.
In 2024 Petrolino covered New Jersey permit-to-carry statistics extensively. He discovered that Black permit-to-carry applicants are denied more than double their white counterparts for non-criminal/subjective reasons. Petrolino filed records requests seeking statistics on retired police officer carry permits to build on his coverage, all of which have been denied.
As noted in the complaint, “Plaintiff and the public has a strong interest in ascertaining the relationship between the demographics of carry permit holders amongst the general public and retired law enforcement officers including but not limited to county location, race, sex and the effect of potentially disqualifying criteria in the application population as well as the success rate for the appeal process within the New Jersey State Police.”
“Having established Petrolino was deprived of his common law right of access the New Jersey Civil Rights Act was violated, the clear remedy is injunctive relief compelling the production of the records to Petrolino, …” the brief notes.
“The NJSP has denied countless records requests that I’ve made over the years, never fulfilling even one,” Director Petrolino said. “When I emailed them about these denials, an unnamed person at NJSP basically told me to sue them — so here we are.”
“Records concerning the retired police officer permits are about as public as you can get,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said. “Do they have the same level of perceived bias in their permitting statistics? Or perhaps worse yet, do they not? The public has a right to know this information. We laud Director Petrolino in his quest to hold New Jersey officials accountable by forcing them to be transparent with those they swore to serve.”
John Petrolino v. New Jersey State Police, & Trooper “X” was filed in N.J. Superior Court in Mercer County on February 27, 2026. This is a developing story and we anticipate an eventual victory for Mr. Petrolino.
Look, there are some things that probably shouldn't be released, including personal information about individual officers or retirees. That makes sense and, frankly, no one is asking for that.
Petrolino just wants to know how many permits were issued to retired law enforcement officers. They keep those separate in their system, because it's not part of the data regularly available with regard to permit numbers.
The truth is that New Jersey isn't exactly fond of anyone taking a look under the hood. Petrolino has previously found racial disparities in permit issuance, for example, and I suspect they have something to hide here as well. They called it “Improper and Overbroad," despite it being pretty limited and straightforward. It's a total number of a particular group who received permits yet whose permits don't show up elsewhere in public records. How hard is "one...two...three..." anyway?
I mean, I know it's a leftist state and all that, but it's also not exactly rocket science.
What does New Jersey have to hide?
I don't have a clue, but the only thing I trust the state government to do is be untrustworthy.
Now, they'll have to explain in court why they can't cough up records that should be available with just a few keystrokes.