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A Sussex County man's lawsuit challenging the state's handgun-carry restrictions - supported by the NRA and 19 states - is before the U.S. Supreme Court justices on Friday.

(George Frey/Getty)



FREDON — The U.S. Supreme Court will decide in the coming days whether it will hear a Sussex County man's challenge to New Jersey's handgun carry laws.

The lawsuit, brought by John Drake, challenges the “justifiable need” requirement the state asks for carrying a handgun. It has drawn the support of the National Rifle Association and 19 other states, who see the case as a possible watershed moment for reevaluating how the Second Amendment and state regulations interact.

The nation's highest court now has scheduled a conference for Friday morning on whether to decide to hear the case in its entirety, according to its online schedule.

Drake, a Fredon man who owns and operates an ATM business and who occasionally carries significant amounts of cash, said today that the case could be the first step toward the “Holy Grail of the gun rights movement,” the right to carry.

“If the Supreme Court decides to take the case, it could clarify the right to carry issue for the entire nation, and New Jersey would become ground zero for the gun-rights movement as the scramble of the decade begins,” Drake said this morning.

In response to the lawsuit, New Jersey’s acting Attorney General, John J. Hoffman, wrote that the state’s gun laws are “a careful grid of regulatory provisions” only allowing carry permits when there is “special danger to the applicant’s life.

“New Jersey’s Legislature, long ago, made the predictive judgment that widespread carrying of handguns in public would not be consistent with public safety because of the inherent danger it poses,” Hoffman responded, citing laws as far back as the 1790s restricting firearms in the state.

The case was initially filed in 2010 by a pet-store owner who was kidnapped in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, but the suit has since changed plaintiffs and defendants several times, and was most recently dismissed by a Circuit Appeals court last year.

The conference of the justices will take place behind closed doors - and a vote of four of the nine members is needed to decide to grant certiorari, said David Jensen, one of Drake’s attorneys.

Jensen said he was "cautiously optimistic" the Supreme Court would ultimately take the case - because it's a timely issue that's been continually raised in the federal court system.

"The issue has percolated in the appeals courts for the last year and a half," Jensen said. "It would be well-timed."

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