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The state Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to New Jersey's toughest gun law, which says people must prove an urgent threat of violence before getting permits to carry handguns.

(John O'Boyle/The Star-Ledger)

TRENTON — For the first time in nearly half a century, the state Supreme Court will hear a landmark case that could redefine gun rights in New Jersey.

The state’s highest court has agreed to consider a challenge to the toughest gun-control law in New Jersey, first passed in 1924, which says people must show "justifiable need" if they want permits to carry handguns.

Thursday, a federal appeals court upheld the same New Jersey law in a separate case, saying states can require residents seeking the right to carry handguns to prove they have an "urgent necessity for self-protection."

But experts say the state Supreme Court’s ruling could have a more sweeping impact because the court has wider reach to interpret state law and could choose to change its last major decision on gun rights: a 1968 ruling saying only citizen militias — not individuals — have Second Amendment rights in New Jersey.

"The bottom line is this is a very important if not the most important case yet on the Second Amendment and New Jersey gun laws," said Evan Nappen, the lawyer representing a Monmouth County man challenging the law.

The state justices, whose new session begins next month, will take another stab at how the court defined Second Amendment rights to see whether it holds up 45 years later.

The issue has sparked a heated debate.

Gun-rights supporters say ordinary citizens almost never get permits to carry handguns because the law is one of the most restrictive in the country and state judges rarely find that applicants need to be armed.

Advocates for gun control describe the law as a huge success, curbing violent crime for decades.

Like dozens of New Jerseyans before him, Richard Pantano didn’t get a permit when he applied in 2011.

A landscape-supply business owner from Manalapan, Pantano argued he needed a gun to defend himself while carrying large bundles of cash in the evenings. Lower courts denied his request, saying he had never been assaulted and hadn’t proved a "justifiable need" to carry a gun, a phrase state courts have interpreted to mean urgent threats of violence.

Pantano now argues that New Jersey’s law violates the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In an order last week, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal.

"Mr. Pantano carries thousands of dollars in cash and needs a gun to protect himself — and he was recommended (for a permit) by a chief of police," said Nappen, who is a board member of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs. "If he can’t get a permit, what are we talking about when it comes to justifiable need?"

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is defending the gun law in court. A spokesman for acting Attorney General John Hoffman declined to comment.

In the federal 3rd Circuit case, four New Jersey residents who were denied concealed-carry permits — as well as two gun-rights groups, including Nappen’s — also argued that the state’s handgun law was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently expanded Americans’ gun rights under the Second Amendment, ruling in 2008 that individuals can keep guns at home and in 2010 that every state must observe that right.

But those court decisions stopped short of telling states how to police firearms outside the home or what they should do about handgun-carrying permits, said Bryan Miller, executive director of Heeding God’s Call, a faith-based gun-control group.

QUESTIONS 'UNSETTLED'

The federal appeals court, sitting in Philadelphia, agreed Thursday. "It remains unsettled whether the individual right to bear arms for the purpose of self-defense extends beyond the home," the panel wrote.

Miller said the public "is less safe when people are allowed to walk around with loaded handguns in their pockets. The six states with the lowest per capita rates of gun deaths all are strong gun-law states like New Jersey."

Nappen said he doubted those numbers and that "plainly, the Second Amendment is talking about the ability to have guns outside the home. The American Revolution wasn’t won by fighting inside the patriots’ homes."

Neither side expects the state Supreme Court, historically one of the toughest on gun control, to allow wider use of handguns. The case is expected to be argued as early as this fall.

"New Jersey is not a very pro-gun state, and I doubt the Supreme Court is willing to take that step and open up the gun permits for carrying in public," said Frank Askin, a constitutional law professor at Rutgers University in Newark. He said the issue could end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nappen conceded Pantano faces an uphill battle at the state Supreme Court. The state constitution doesn’t guarantee any gun rights, so Pantano can only make his case under the federal Second Amendment.

The state Supreme Court said in 1968 that the Second Amendment only applies to militias. In 1971, the justices upheld the "justifiable need" law, ruling that the Legislature could pass gun-control measures in the interest of public safety. And in 1990, the state court reinforced that decision, denying handgun-carrying permits to two private detectives.

Justice Nathan Jacobs wrote in 1971 that "widespread handgun possession in the streets, somewhat reminiscent of frontier days, would not be at all in the public interest."

The seven-member high court was split on taking the current case: Only three members — Justices Jaynee LaVecchia and Barry Albin; and Judge Ariel Rodriguez, who is temporarily filling a vacancy — the minimum needed, voted to hear it.

Editor's note: A previous version of this article incorrectly said appellant Richard Pantano was from Bergen County. He is from Monmouth County.

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