DOJ Opens Investigation Into Pennsauken, NJ for Egregious Firearm Permit Delays
Pennsauken Township Police face federal scrutiny for allegedly using unjust delays to deny residents their right to keep and bear arms. This is the same Second Amendment Section playbook AmmoLand has documented from Los Angeles County’s multi-year carry-permit black hole to Minnesota’s permission-slips and the rest of the blue-state schemes that treat the right to keep and bear arms as optional.
On October 14, 2026, the Department of Justice opened an investigation to determine whether Pennsauken, New Jersey, deprives citizens of their right to bear arms through egregious and unjust delays in issuing firearm licenses. The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear firearms — including the right to carry firearms. The investigation focuses on the Pennsauken Township Police’s permitting system and explicitly does not support any armed obstruction of federal or local law enforcement.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division stated:
“I have directed the Civil Rights Division, through our Second Amendment Section, to defend law-abiding citizens from local authorities who infringe on the right to safely carry legal firearms. Our investigation aims to discover if allegations of unconstitutional delays in firearm permitting are true, and if so, to fix it.”
The DOJ was direct. It is a violation of the Second Amendment for government officials to delay issuing permits to purchase or carry firearms. In 2022, the Supreme Court held in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen that a state’s permitting process is put towards “abusive ends” when “lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.” The release states that Pennsauken, through the Pennsauken Township Police Department, is alleged to use just such “abusive ends” to improperly limit Second Amendment rights.
Dhillon reinforced the point on X: the Civil Rights Division is investigating whether Pennsauken is preventing residents from timely obtaining purchase permits to legally acquire firearms, and “the right to bear arms is protected by the Constitution for every American—it is not a second-class right.”
The @CivilRights Division is investigating whether Pennsauken, NJ, is preventing residents from timely obtaining purchase permits to legally acquire firearms. The right to bear arms is protected by the Constitution for every American—it is not a second-class right!
https://t.co/B0vlZLoS7r
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) October 14, 2026
The Civil Rights Division’s Second Amendment Section enforces the Second Amendment. Residents who believe their rights are being infringed can submit a complaint.
Delays Are a Denial of Rights, Not “Process”
This is not a technical dispute over paperwork speed. Bruen confirmed that ordinary, law-abiding Americans have an individual right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. A licensing system that strings people along with egregious delays makes that right meaningless in practice. What the Constitution forbids the government from prohibiting outright, it also forbids the government from suppressing through bureaucratic paralysis. A right delayed is a right denied.
New Jersey has long operated under some of the most restrictive firearms laws in the country. Permitting authorities in the Garden State have a documented history of waits, conditions, and slow-walking that go well beyond any legitimate public-safety function. The DOJ’s investigation into Pennsauken is the logical next application of a pattern AmmoLand has covered extensively under the current administration.
DOJ’s Second Amendment Push
The Pennsauken probe sits squarely in the line of affirmative actions the Civil Rights Division has taken since the creation of the dedicated Second Amendment Section. It also follows a pattern of lawsuits from the Trump administration’s DOJ.
On September 30, 2025, the Civil Rights Division filed its first affirmative lawsuit on behalf of gun owners against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. That complaint alleged thousands of carry applications sat for extreme periods (average delays to the next step in the hundreds of days, some stretching beyond a thousand days) while almost no licenses were issued. AmmoLand later covered the proposed settlement that, if approved, places LASD under multi-year reporting, DOJ verification, and federal-court enforcement. The delay was treated as a constitutional injury, not as bad customer service.
Also in September 2026, another lawsuit, this time against Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, over the state’s purchase-permit system and waiting periods that routinely ran past the statutory window and into the 60-day range. Dhillon stated that law-abiding citizens do not need government permission to purchase a firearm and that forcing people who have already cleared a background check to wait is intolerable. The need for defense of home, family, and property is most acute now, not thirty to sixty days from now. AmmoLand noted that the suit challenges the broader idea of permission slips and that a right delayed is a right denied.
There have also been DOJ actions against Montgomery County, Maryland’s sweeping 100-yard carry exclusion zones (framed as a pattern or practice of police misconduct under federal civil-rights statutes), San Jose’s high carry fees and mandatory psychological testing (later expanded to the gun-insurance mandate), and Denver’s long-standing AR-15 ban. Across these cases the through-line is the same: the Second Amendment is a full civil right enforceable against state and local officials the same way other rights are enforced. Local governments cannot invent work-arounds — delay, fee, testing, insurance, or geographic bans — to nullify what the text and Bruen protect.
The Pennsauken investigation is the latest data point in that record. It is aimed at a New Jersey township whose police department is alleged to have used the same abusive-ends tactic Bruen flagged. Readers who have experienced lengthy waits, unexplained holds, or slow responses on purchase or carry permits in Pennsauken or elsewhere in the state have a clear avenue to document it with the Second Amendment Section.
Shall Not Be Infringed
Permitting schemes themselves sit in tension with the plain text of the Second Amendment. The right is preexisting; government does not create it and does not get to condition it on its own convenience. Even under the most generous reading of Bruen’s discussion of shall-issue regimes, lengthy wait times that deny ordinary citizens their right are unconstitutional. The DOJ is now investigating whether that is happening in Pennsauken.
This is enforcement, not negotiation. The Trump administration’s Civil Rights Division, through the Second Amendment Section under Harmeet Dhillon, has treated the right to keep and bear arms as non-negotiable. AmmoLand’s ongoing coverage has documented the lawsuits, the settlements, the quotes, and the pattern. The Pennsauken investigation is the newest chapter. Citizens who believe their rights are being delayed into oblivion should file the complaint. The right shall not be infringed — and the federal government is finally saying so in New Jersey.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.