…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. …
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