The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners filed suit against several Bergen County, New Jersey, officials in November on behalf of Elsid Aliaj, and now the legal action includes two more Garden State plaintiffs.
His wife was involuntarily admitted to a facility over mental health concerns in April 2025. The issues were largely due to the language barrier, and she was diagnosed with pregnancy-related adjustment disorder.
For this, authorities confiscated her husband’s firearms. More than a year later, Aliaj still does not possess his legal weapons, and the original suit against the county’s leadership just got stronger.
Innocent gun owners lose their rights over others’ actions
SAF Senior Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack blasted local officials for going after law-abiding citizens’ firearms.
“Bergen County’s very clear policy is: If you live with a prohibited person, or even someone suspected of being prohibited, your rights can be taken away,” Sack said. “This took the form of permit denials and revocations, and outright gun confiscations. What we learned after filing this case on behalf of Mr. Aliaj is that the constitutional abuse he suffered was all too common in Bergen County.”
County officials are free to deny gun rights for virtually any reason
SAF’s gun rights advocates learned in the duration that there were more victims of this unjust practice in Bergen County. Both of the newly added plaintiffs lost their lawful weapons over concerns about their loved ones.
Monday’s complaint noted that the plaintiffs were denied their Second Amendment freedoms “not premised upon any allegation that plaintiffs themselves are prohibited, but rather by association with a cohabitant who is so prohibited or otherwise disqualified, or by association with a cohabitant who county defendants perceive to be so prohibited or otherwise disqualified.”
Second Amendment freedoms must not be so arbitrarily granted that authorities may yank them away over nothing more than “the state’s concerns.”
The present situation in Bergen County is the very definition of a “slippery slope.”
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