New Jersey Gov Phil Murphy firearm license fee hike
(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
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Under current law, applicants must pay $52.66 to be fingerprinted when applying for a New Jersey Firearm Purchaser ID card or a pistol permit. The permit application itself costs $5. (The handgun permit fee is $2.) Governor Phil Murphy wants to increase the application fee to sixty times the current amount (and have permits expire in four years).

A source close to the Murphy administration has confirmed with NJ2AS that he will be advocating to raise the cost of a firearm identification card to $300 and also raise the cost of a retired law enforcement conceal carry permit to $150. We expect this announcement to occur during his budget address Tuesday afternoon.

Governor Murphy has expressed support to raise the fees in the past. ”It’s hard to believe it’s actually cheaper to get a permit to purchase a handgun, which is $2, than it is to get a dog license in practically any town in our state,” Murphy said at a June 13, 2018, bill signing.

We reached out to Senate Democratic leadership and they decline to comment on speculation.

Historically fees and taxes have been used against minority communities of color to suppress their constitutional rights, such as voting and firearm ownership. Poll taxes were used to prevent minorities and people of color from voting, and laws banning certain types of firearms were enacted to prevent the poor and freed slaves from owning guns.

Alexander Roubian at nj2as.org in Gov Murphy to propose fee increase for firearm permits. Modern day poll tax?

What other constitutional rights do New Jersey residents have to pay to exercise?

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76 COMMENTS

    • Well I’m not going to be fishing saltwater, but IIm getting itchy for the spring thaw you betcha…Love to shoot, live to fish.

    • You better set up machine gun towers on top of the Blue Ridge mtns; those cockroaches will be scurrying up the hill for safety…

  1. The right to keep and bear arms is not a constitutionally protected right in New Jersey.

  2. I wonder what the response would be if the onerous restrictions that many states put on the RIGHT to keep and bear arms would be placed on abortions….

      • Interesting you say voting…..every state that has introduced a Voter ID law has been fought in court…We have to have show our ID and have a background check…

        • Delaware has a voter ID law because democrats enjoy a 2 to 1advantage in the state. If it were close or they were at 40 percent they would oppose it with all their might.

  3. Leaving New Jersey was the best decision I’ve ever made. It took months and a bunch of paperwork just to buy a pistol there a few years back. The laws there just keep getting harder for good folks to stay on the right side of, but I guess they affect criminals…. oh wait, no, it doesn’t. It just makes productive members of society into criminals if, say, some municipality holds up foid card renewal paperwork.

    • Best decision I made too. Had to swim across the Delaware in the dark of night, evading the bridge trolls, with a knife clenched in my teeth as I made my way to freedom in the good Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

  4. We keep electing these Demo-Authoritarians and allowing STASI police departments to exist…If the We the People really got together and kept a strong eye on our representatives. We might be able reverse this mess. Before the Globalists win…

  5. ”It’s hard to believe it’s actually cheaper to get a permit to purchase a handgun, which is $2, than it is to get a dog license in practically any town in our state,” Murphy said

    The Constitution doesn’t say anything about pets. However, if he is so surprised about the cost of dog licenses relative to other licenses, perhaps it is the dog license fee that is excessive rather than the other fees that are too low.

    In any case the keeping and bearing of arms is a Constitutionally protected right. Instead of adding fees to control the right, taxpayer funds should be expended protecting it and encouraging it.

    • Off-topic, but I’ll tell you something about pets and NJ law.
      If your cat or dog bites a vet or tech during a medical procedure and dies, you’d better make sure their rabies immunization is documented and up-to-date. By law they can quarantine the animal’s body and take the head for testing. You’ll never get your pet back whole.
      Your pet will be returned to you in a mutilated state, minus the head, whether or not the care personnel had medical coverage. They did that to my animal even though he was never in the Shore facility for suspected rabies, and even threatened to call the police on me if I removed his remains without permission.
      It’s just one more reason to despise NJ.

      • Let me get this straight. Your dog who was not documented as being immunized against rabies bit a worker at a veterinary clinic and died. You are upset because New Jersey allowed the vet to send the animals remains in for testing to facilitate treatment of the worker. Are you upset because you did not get the remains back, because you didn’t get the skull back, or because the took the remains for testing? Just trying to understand this. I am also trying to understand why the animal wasn’t immunized.

        • “I am also trying to understand why the animal wasn’t immunized.”

          We are way off the reservation here, but…

          We have cats (well, wife has cats, they tolerate me). All of them have been indoor cats since birth. They are never allowed outdoors. There is no need for rabies vac. Our vet documented the no outdoors condition, and does not require rabies vac as a condition of treatment. Local laws also permit no vac if animals are indoors-only. Of course, if you cheat, and rabies enters the situation, you are royally screwed.

          As a child, I was bitten by a field rat I was trying to hold. Had 14 doses of rabies antidote in the stomach. Not unfamiliar with the problem of unvacinated pets.

        • Indoor cat, shots all up to date, never sick, died within three days of pulmonary edema and heart condition. Ate snacks from my hand while in an oxygen container and drank water from his bowl while in the facility. Hydrophobic animals avoid water and they tend to bite anyone, family included. Doesn’t sound like an infected cat to me. I was given a mutilated body in return and never told whether he had an active rabies infection. Since there was no doctor’s confirmation or bureaucratic crisis over an infected medical tech, I’ll assume my animal had zero symptoms and was rabies negative.
          I’m pissed because the law here sees fit to not only help itself to your income, but also consistently seeks increasing eminent domain over your property and legally owned pets.
          Solution? Take what’s yours and leave. I am.

        • Except your vet and literally everyone else has no way to know whether you are telling the truth, as people always lie about that stuff. That’s why you need immunization *records*, so they don’t have to trust you with their life if they get bit.

        • Ok, you pet was a cat. In most states it doesn’t matter whether your pet is an inside only animal. As Hannibal deftly pointed out rabies is a deadly serious matter. The cat could have caught a bat or rat inside your house without you even knowing. Expecting them to just take your word for it is unreasonable. You should’ve been charged for the rabies testing prosecuted for keeping unvaccinated animals.

        • “You should’ve been charged for the rabies testing prosecuted for keeping unvaccinated animals.”

          Which I suppose would justify requiring homeowners/landlords to undergo frequent government mandated health inspections to certify that no disease-carrying animals have taken up residence (without you knowing it), spreading death and destruction everywhere they walk.

        • Sorry Sam I Am, that comment is just so vacuous a rational reply isn’t even possible

        • “Sorry Sam I Am, that comment is just so vacuous a rational reply isn’t even possible”

          I structured the comment along the lines you set….extremely rare possibility, almost nonexistent. If it is possible that a pet could somehow contact a rabid animal unknown to the owners, it is just as possible that rabid creatures unknown to the owners could be prowling the interior, spreading disease.

          Either examples are just “what if”, which has no limits.

  6. So, the “funding by other means” types haven’t gotten their hands on gun licenses yet?

    It’s N J. I get how that’s “hard to believe.”

  7. How about a $ 10,000 fee to process paperwork to run for mayor. If elected, the mayor would have to post a $ 50,000 bond while in office and have an extensive background check to remain in office. Better still pass a background check before running for office.

  8. If The Second Amendment can be constrained by the length of a barrel (never mind requiring a license to own a literal muffler for your gun) and type or presence of a stock (changing exactly nothing about the inherent mechanical function of the weapon) then it can also be constrained by things that make a gun “better” in any other way or which have no mechanical and functional impact whatsoever.

    The record is clear that the 2020 hopeful Democrats — all of them running to date — want make any detachable-magazine firearm a NFA weapon, which requires only a literal one-sentence addition to existing law. If they win they will do this.

    That will be de-facto national firearms registration for what likely amounts to more than half of the weapons in America today, including every single pistol and most deer hunting rifles, say much less the lowly Ruger 10/22 or the garden-variety AR15. Legal ownership transfers of any kind of anything listed as an NFA weapon require payment of a $400 tax, six+month (which will triple or more in time, if not become effectively infinite) wait time for the paperwork to come back before the transfer takes place and fingerprinting requirements for each weapon sold or transferred each time it is transferred. There are no exceptions to these requirements either — even between immediate family members. And, by the way, for any NFA firearm or other NFA item you also must, as a person transporting your personal property, declare each item you intend to transport across a state line — in advance and receive the permit back — before you do so. Any bet that the next act will be to add on to that form-filing requirement a nice, rapidly-escalating fee (tax)?…

    http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=235220

  9. So much drivel in so few words.

    “It’s hard to believe…” — Marvelously ambiguous. Implies “it” is dumb and wrong, without saying anything refutable.

    Generalizes on the sly from *the speaker’s* belief, to *general* belief, to *what’s true.* Hijacks conventions of polite conversation to block out the obvious reply: “I’m sorry you are so reality-challenged.”

    “This fee vs that fee” — is a massive non sequitur. What does the one have to do with the other? As said, implies that lower fees should be higher, not the higher, lower. Also that gun fees, n regs in general shiuld be *more* burdensome, still w/o saying it outright. Really, why should they?

    Because they are implications, buried in ambiguities of the language used, you can’t respond to the hidden meaning … though everybody knows it. The general counter is *not* to reply to what they implied, but tag back up on the implication. Make them say the impli ation out loud, n own it.

    The tactic works because by plugging in ambiguities, they have you arguing against yourself: politely thinking “How could that be true.”, seeking to understand. Plus it uses the tremendous social pressure to move conversations forward. Together, they stop you from *saying* the obvious.

    “That’s a good question; why can’t we lower the dog fees?”

    “I can think of three reasons it’s lower, and should be. What have you got?”

    Myself, I like to recall the opening to the classic version of “Shout.” Reminds me to slow down the sleight of mouth, and to proclaim it loud. Own it. “Now, waaa-aaa-aaa-a-a-a-a-aiit a minute.”

    There’s technique to putting them on the hook for their buried presuppositions, without you looking like the jerk. The “Verbal Self-Defense” series by Hayden-Elgen unwinds this in workplace, calling the cheats “attacks”, which they are in social standing sense: “marginalizing” we’d say these days.

    The thing is, this kind of crap is *intended* to out you in a double bind. Either let their presuppositions slide, n lose. Or look like a nerk n lose another way. Conveniently, most people parroting this stuff have no idea what they are doing. So any response outside the script glitches them. Expose the hidden payload and they’re in the double bind.

    When people are that wrong, it’s terrible when you take them literally.

  10. This is another ploy by the left to cause even more friction between the haves and the have-nots. This has nothing to do with firearms and everything to do with anarchy.

  11. Filthy Phil Murphy is one of those East Coast LibTards who’ll tax anything to gain the state more revenue.
    Rain tax, property tax, gas tax … it will never end until the serfs ride the politicians’ @$$es out on a rail.
    It isn’t so much about putting firearms out of reach for poor NJ residents – it does, but this has more to do with MORE REVENUE through taxation. New Jersey is literally broke and the “gun violence” issue is an excellent way for Dems to strangle firearms purchases and divert money from businesses they object to.
    Unfortunately, I live in NJ.
    With some luck and a few years from now, we’re gone to Texas. NJ can rot in hell.

  12. People in Jersey have no one to blame but their own people, they voted the jerks in office. If you live in Jersey & know someone who supports or voted for these people take your frustrations out on them, Mad Maxine Waters style, if you got the balls.

    • As a legal resident, I refuse to register and refuse to vote in NJ. I see no point in it.
      From my point of view, it’s a waste of time when the political process is captured and run by a symbiotic mass of corrupt quasi-socialist politicians, mobsters, and unions at the state level. Believe it or not, refusing to comply is a valid choice when you’ve realized a personal vote means little more than a “virtue signaling” within a failed system..
      The Democrats are crooks. The Republicans are outnumbered and worthless. The NJ libtards have even pushed the prospective idea of removing national candidates they disagree with from ballots within the state. So it’s leave or fight.
      I choose to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” – for now, and then leave because NJ isn’t worth fighting for. I’m no NJ native, so moving to fight and die on another hill elsewhere while watching the libtards fight over lost anthills is much preferable.
      See you in Texas.

  13. I’ve said it before and I ‘ll say it again. Make ALL laws apply to ALL citizens equally, including politicians. They get no special breaks, programs, insurance, retirement plans, medical plans etc. They access the exact same programs as the general population, nothing extra. Also, effective immediately, no special carve-outs for police officers re firearms, including retired cops. When these police and fire unions stop supporting these Dems in NJ, the rest of us might have a fighting chance for some justice.

    The also get no armed protection while serving in office. They pay for their own transportation, food, housing and everything else just like you and me.

    I know, I know just a pipe dream. But I thought I just saw a unicorn out in the yard.

    • Exactly.

      That unicorn’s name is liberty. It’s sad that we’ve gotten so far away from a free society that the description of liberty is akin to a myth. It really shows the Hour of the Time.

  14. No matter how they cloak it, Dimwitocrats will always fall back to their DNA: contempt for minorities and the poor. I know these people. Lived among them throughout my formative years.

  15. I looked it up. New Jersey charges an annual fee to have a dog. Administered at the town level, prices vary some. Looks like $12 and up per year per dog, so long as it’s been fixed. Otherwise, price is higher.

    I get that letting dogs run wild, dumping puppies all over the place ain’t the best plan. But after the first proof the animal is fixed has been made, what the hell is the point of an annual payment to reprove it? Do they think the beast is going to regrow his or her reproductive abilities?

    Fees on pets should cover the actual and one time cost to the public, if any such cost can be proven. Short of that, leave ’em be!

    Guns are even less bothersome. No puppies, no kittens. No poop on the grass.

    Yup, clearly, fees on gun ownership should be lower than fees on pet ownership. If any real costs upon the public can be proven that is.

    • “Fees on pets should cover the actual and one time cost to the public, if any such cost can be proven. Short of that, leave ’em be!”

      H’mm.

      With a SCOTUS currently leaning towards the right, it seems to me that those dog fees might be ripe for a court challenge of ‘excessive, and-or burdensome’…

  16. Brilliant. If he wants to drive people underground. They’ll still carry, but NJ won’t know about them.

    What a *#%^|>€ idiot

    • “They’ll still carry, but NJ won’t know about them.”
      I think you misunderstand our New Jersey laws.
      Civilians have never been able to get CCW permits in NJ (unless they’re politically connected).
      The “Permit to Purchase a Handgun” does not allow you to carry a handgun.
      It only allows you to purchase ONE handgun, the permit expires in 90 days, and the clock starts ticking the moment the permit is printed, not the day you pick it up, so you have to basically call in sick to work to pick up the permit immediately after you get your letter that it’s ready (because by the time you get your letter, there are only 85 days left).

      In NJ, civilians can’t carry handguns and can’t keep them in their car (that’s a felony). Their FPID card only allows them to transport them from the home to a registered gun club and back again with zero stops in between!

  17. ”It’s hard to believe it’s actually cheaper to get a permit to purchase a handgun, which is $2, than it is to get a dog license in practically any town in our state,” Well’ my gun doesn’t sh!t in the street, requiring govt. sanitation cleanup. The only waste my gun creates might be dead or wounded bad guys.

    • “The only waste my gun creates might be dead or wounded bad guys.”

      Sounds like a community improvement, to me…

  18. If he thinks this will keep guns out criminal hands he is a dumber ass than once thought. What the hell do these dinks think that kind of garbage will do except mess with law-abiding people. If he gets re-elected the people of NJ will rise on my estimation of really stupid. I lived in Philly so I know something about NJ people.

    • “What the hell do these dinks think that kind of garbage will do except mess with law-abiding people.”

      Why would there be any other reason?

    • Murphy doesn’t care about working people, he wants a complacent slave plantation to milk, otherwise he’d be doing something constructive to stanch the loss of his taxpayer base out of New Jersey. Legalization of marijuana is only a priority because of the state revenue gain. Look at California, same stuff. Law-abiding people leaving in droves and non-citizens getting educational and legal benefits. If it was so great, why is there a net exodus from NJ?
      Murphy is a rich billionaire Obama appointee whose greatest ambition is to be a temporary carpet-bagging administrator of a bankrupted state, living to leverage government as a weapon to stymie policies at the national level – i.e., use his Atty General to litigate Trump at taxpayer expense.

  19. The poor are nothing but worthless scum who shouldn’t be allowed to own a firegum, like what have they got to protect anyways, right?

    • “The poor are nothing but worthless scum who shouldn’t be allowed to own a firegum, like what have they got to protect anyways, right?”

      OOoooppppsss. Someone broke the code.

      • Perhaps they want a gun to keep from being anally or vaginally raped???? Are you against that?

        Is that desire for prevention justification for the poor to have a firearm????

        • “Perhaps they want a gun to keep from being anally or vaginally raped???? Are you against that?”

          “Is that desire for prevention justification for the poor to have a firearm????”

          You may be overthinking both comments you are responding to.

  20. Well hell, in that case, it would just be easier (and maybe cheaper) to just break the law then to get a fire arm, and to hell with following the rules, and being a law abiding citizen. For with rules and regulations like that, only the criminals will have them.

  21. Let ’em do it, that creates legal standing for a ‘poll tax’ constitutional right challenge.

    Let’s start to load the legal lawsuit pipeline and see if any of them get to SCOTUS…

  22. hey asshole
    dogs arent in the bill of rights
    guns are
    you would never make a woman get a card or charge her anything for it to exercise her “14th amendment right”
    i just want the same treatment
    every time she exercises her “14th amendment right” an innocent life is snuffed out for convenience
    every time i exercise my 2nd amendment right an innocent life saved

    • Law-abiding citizens, dogs (or cats), and guns aren’t the real issues.
      It’s ideology, increasing the state’s revenue and control that are.

  23. It took an Amendment to specifically prevent poll taxes. This allows legislators and judges an out where they can charge whatever they want and tell people “hey, if you don’t like needing to pay to exercise your rights, you should amend The Constitution (again) to prevent it!”

  24. That’s a lot of money for a permission slip which expires in 4 years. So it’s 75 a year for the right to have a firearm
    What happens when they doubpe.or triple it? What’s to stop them?
    If you like guns and which to own them your only choice is to move. And hope where you move doesn’t turn into the same thing

    • While I make no excuses for Murphy.. The FOID does not expire. It is a document for life that you must update each time you move etc…

      Carry permits have to be renewed in NJ, but SINCE THEY DON’T EXIST FOR NORMAL CITIZENS, it’s like arguing about the lifecycle of Unicorn Horns.

      • Joseph Mitchell, you said, “The FOID does not expire. It is a document for life that you must update each time you move etc.”

        I think you missed the part where Gov. Murphy wants to make the FPID (FOID) card expire every four years!
        Not only is he raising the FPID card fee from $5 to $300, it will expire every four years, which means $75 per year as long as you live in the Garbage State (NJ).
        That’s a good way to drive out law-abiding citizens from the state of New Jersey.
        I voted against Murphy, so don’t blame all New Jerseyans for him being governor.


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      2A Fee Hike in New Jersey: Gov. Murphy Wants to Price Guns Out of Reach of the Poor

      by Dan Zimmerman |

      Mar 03, 2019 |

      63 comments

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      New Jersey Gov Phil Murphy firearm license fee hike

      (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

      Under current law, applicants must pay $52.66 to be fingerprinted when applying for a New Jersey Firearm Purchaser ID card or a pistol permit. The permit application itself costs $5. (The handgun permit fee is $2.) Governor Phil Murphy wants to increase the application fee to sixty times the current amount

      (and have permits expire in four years).”

      Looks like he wants to change that feature. And what King Murphy wants the compliant legislature will give him

  25. I like my Hi Point 45 pistol. I will keep it. Because history is repeating itself. They are going to make guns as expensive as then can, using government regulation. This way only the rich will have guns. It’s been done before. This is not new. Its new to people who don’t read history books.

    What if they pass a law that says you have to spend at least $1000 at the gun store to buy your hand gun? Or any long gun, shot gun or rifle, must cost at least $5000 in order for to you to buy it?
    And all semi auto long guns must cost at least $10,000. Then only the rich would have guns. That Bump Stock was not a machine gun. But it gave rapid fire performance to a poor person who wanted one for $175. Instead of paying $80,000 for a real machine gun.

    You say “it can’t happen here”!!!
    It already has. You are one of many ignorant people about gun control history. I suggest you incorporate the following in your talk points about defending the Second Amendment. The only difference is it will be applied to white people. And to everyone else.

    “Tennessee enacted the 1871 “Army and Navy” law, barring the sale of any handguns except the “Army and Navy model.” The ex-Confederate soldiers already had their high-quality Army and Navy guns. But cash-poor freedmen could barely afford lower-cost, simpler firearms not of the Army and Navy quality.

    Many Southern states followed Tennessee’s lead, with facially neutral laws banning inexpensive guns, or requiring permits to own or carry a gun. As one Florida judge explained, the laws were “passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers . . . [and] never intended to be applied to the white population.” (Watson v. Stone, Florida, 1941).”

    https://www.encounterbooks.com/features/racist-roots-gun-control/

  26. lol, I’m happy to be in Jersey knowing that PA redneck assholes can go to jail if they carry a gun in their car. Makes it much less likely that one of you freedom fighter jackasses are going to pull a gun because your snowflake ass got cut off in traffic. Good riddance.

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