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The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling upholding a New Jersey requirement for gun owners to show an urgent need to carry a handgun outside their home for self-defense.

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TRENTON

— Should New Jersey gun owners have the right to be armed in public without having to show an urgent need to do so?

The question arose again Monday

when the U.S. Supreme Court

rejected an appeal in a high-profile lawsuit led by a Sussex County man seeking a permit to carry his handgun outside his house.

In doing so, the high court let stand the state's requirement that gun owners must demonstrate a "justifiable need" to be armed in public. Both local police and then a state Superior Court judge must approve such permits in New Jersey.

John Drake of Fredon — one of many plaintiffs in the case — said he needs a gun for personal protects because he services ATM machines for a living and carries large amounts of cash.

"It seems unreasonable to me to have to wait until you're beaten up or shot at to get a permit," Drake

told The Star-Ledger in February.

The National Rifle Association agrees. The gun-rights group and 19 states filed paperwork in the last few months to support Drake's case.

"Law-abiding citizens have a constitutional right to defend themselves beyond their front doorstep," said Chris W. Cox, the executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action.

Court filings in the case focused on the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down a local law prohibiting residents from keeping guns in their home for self-defense.

The ruling left open the right to bear arms in other situations. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the Second Amendment doesn't allow citizens "to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."

In 2012, U.S. District Judge William Walls wrong that the alternative to New Jersey's "justifiable need" requirement would be allowing carry permits to anyone who felt "the subjective need based on nothing more than 'general fears' to go about their daily lives prepared to use deadly force."

"The risks associated with a judicial error in discouraging regulation of firearms carried in public are too great," Walls concluded.

Last fall, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld Walls' ruling in a 2-1 decision. In his dissent, Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman wrote that in the Heller decision, the Supreme Court recognized that the Second Amendment extends beyond the home and "protects an inherent right to self-defense."

By refusing to take up the case this week, the Supreme Court upheld the 3rd circuit ruling.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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