DOJ Sues Minnesota Over Gun Permit-to-Purchase Laws and Waiting Periods
On September 24, the Department of Justice took a huge step that could have major repercussions for gun control. The DOJ filed a lawsuit saying Minnesota’s firearm purchase permit and 30-day waiting period are unconstitutional.
Daniel Rosen, the U.S. Attorney General for the District of Minnesota, said:
“We are committed to protecting Minnesotans’ right to purchase firearms and we will not tolerate procedures that are wielded in a way that impairs that right.”
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said:
“Law-abiding citizens do not need government permission to purchase a firearm, and forcing a citizen who has already passed a background check to wait up to sixty days to obtain a firearm is intolerable under the Constitution.”
The suit is being brought against the state of Minnesota and the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Minnesota’s original purchase permit law was enacted in 1977 but has been modified several times, most recently in 2025.
In 2023, the state expanded its waiting period from seven to 30 days, the same as the time limit for local police or the county sheriff to grant or deny a permit.
According to the DOJ, police in both Minneapolis and St. Paul routinely take more than the 30 days the law allowed and that wait times of up to 60 days are not uncommon.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon commented:
“The Supreme Court held that the home is where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. When a person needs to defend their home, they need to defend it now, not thirty to sixty days from now.”
In June 2015, Carol Bowne, a Berlin, New Jersey hairdresser, was murdered outside her home. The killer was her abusive ex-boyfriend. Ms. Bowne had been granted a restraining order, but the ex-boyfriend violated the order a number of times.
Ms. Bowne had applied for a permit to purchase a gun. Like Minnesota, New Jersey state law allowed 30 days for police to either grant or deny that application. The day Ms. Bowne was murdered, it had been 42 days since she applied.
Minnesota does exempt citizens holding a valid permit to carry licenses. However, only about 8.2% of Minnesota adults have these licenses. This leaves roughly 4.2 million Minnesota adults vulnerable to police in two very blue cities.
The state attorney general’s office issued a statement in response to the filing:
“Given the recent, shocking, and tragic instances of gun violence in Minnesota, it is astonishing that the Trump administration is devoting its resources to attacking Minnesota’s police departments and the state’s common-sense background check laws. These laws, which Minnesota’s elected representatives passed democratically, are in place to ensure permits to purchase or transfer handguns and assault rifles are issued only to eligible purchasers. It should disturb every single Minnesotan that Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to make Minnesota less safe.”
Perhaps someone should tell Keith Ellis, Minnesota’s Attorney General, about Carol Bowne.
As the old saying goes, it’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it. And a right delayed is a right denied.
The most significant impact of the DOJ lawsuit is that it challenges the entire constitutionality of requiring a state-issued permit to purchase or possess a firearm. Such a requirement flies straight into the face of the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment protects a preexisting right not only to self-defense but to armed self-defense.
With the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791 and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, neither the federal government nor a state government has the power to interfere with an individual citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. If the citizen subsequently misuses or abuses the right, the federal, state, and local governments have the necessary power to to bring the citizen to justice. That’s their job, not issuing permission slips.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court fumbled the ball in NYSRPA v. Bruen. While the main part of Justice Clarence Thomas’ majority opinion was wonderful news for supporters of our civil rights, the first line of Footnote 9 was a setback.
Thomas’ failure to specify the ruling applied only to licenses to carry a handgun allowed a number of states to claim the court was blessing any type of gun permit.
“To be clear, nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States’ “shall-issue” licensing regimes, under which “a general desire for self-defense is sufficient to obtain a [permit].”
“That said, because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”
The DOJ can expect significant opposition; they have fired the first volley against a government that feels entitled to violate our rights by making it difficult, bordering on impossible, to exercise them in the way the Founders envisioned.
Minnesota is in the Eighth Judicial Circuit, which has a mixed record on Second Amendment issues. We could wish it were in the Fifth Circuit, but we can be glad it wasn’t in the Seventh Circuit. Or the Ninth.
About Bill Cawthon
Bill Cawthon first became a gun owner 55 years ago. He has been an active advocate for Americans’ civil liberties for more than a decade. He is the information director for the Second Amendment Society of Texas.
