New Jersey Phil Murphy gun stores
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy never passes up an opportunity to further burden the right to keep and bear arms in his Second Amendment hellhole of a state. Raising costs and increasing the hassles involved in gun ownership is just part of what governing means for Murphy.

Along those lines, Murphy used the expense of dealing with COVID-19 in New Jersey — where people have died at a higher rate than anywhere else in the nation — as cover to propose massive tax increases on the costs of owning, carrying, selling and even making guns.

As the NSSF’s Larry Keane wrote . . .

Gov. Murphy’s proposed antigun increases include raising the handgun purchasing permit fee 2,400 percent from $2 to $50; the cost of a firearm ID card by 1,900 percent from $5 to $100; the price of a handgun carry permit 7,900 percent from $50 to $400; the fee for a gun retail dealer license by 9,900 percent from $50 to $500; and the fee for a firearm manufacturer 900 percent from $150 to $1,500. There are, or course, additional fee increases as well.

Happily, though, Murphy was forced to give up his dream of further burdening Garden State gun owners in the final budget deal.

From nj.com:

The agreement…jettisons Murphy’s other proposed tax increases on sales of cigarettes, firearms, boat sales, limousine rides and a tax on opioid manufacturers, according to two legislative sources who were not authorized to publicly discuss the plan and requested anonymity.

New Jersey gun owners likely won’t be celebrating for long. Murphy’s proposed these kinds of increases before and he’ll no doubt do it again. This time, he couldn’t get away with using a pandemic as an excuse to plug the state’s budget deficit, in part, on the backs of lawful gun owners. But there will be more opportunities to try again down the road and Murphy never lets a crisis go to waste.

26 COMMENTS

    • It is amusing that the Imperatos wanted a better place to make guns so they moved a whole two or three miles to the second worse place.

    • It’s not better than NY. It’s just better than NYC. You can carry a gun in most of NY (geographically) if you go through the license motions. Can’t do that anywhere in Jersey.

  1. Jim Crow Gun Control democRat Wimp Phil Murphy lost what amounts to a firearm poll tax. Sleazy self serving democRats have no shame and must be defeated.

    TRUMP/PENCE 2020.

  2. “Phil Murphy Loses His Huge New Gun Taxes”

    Which would have been un Constitutional to begin with, for the life of me ,why don’t the people toss the homer out on his ear or some other part of his anatomy where he belongs.

  3. I have proposed before, a tax that would balance any budget and pay off shortfalls and debt. This tax would only be paid by the ” elite” and not be passed down to consumers. impose a tax of $ 2500.00 per lie told by any elected official, local or state or federal levels. Can you imagine the revenue generated from this !

    • You would have to first raise the bar on what can be considered a lie or they would be out of money in less than a week or two.

      • The Democrats must be planning to finance their next administration via a tax on lies — it would explain why they claim to have documented Trump telling 20 thousand-million lies.

  4. Murphy is yet another Jon Corzine/Goldman Sucks sleazeball. You gotta hand it to New Jersey though — it remains a paragon of consistency, always for sale to a Goldman alumnus with money to burn.

  5. One good thing about it. If those damned liberals from up north decide to start another civil war they want have any weapons except molitove cocktails. That against an AR seems unfair but who cares when you are cleaning the gene pool.

  6. His actions and intentions should bar him from wearing that US Flag on his lapel. He is not a follower nor believer in the Constitution or he would understand that what he proposed violates the 2nd Amendment. He also fails to understand what “Gun Control” Legislation should be doing; it should be restricting the criminals and mentally impaired from gaining access to weapons along with strengthening the efforts to get illegal weapons off the streets and prosecuting the black market operators. Instead he attempts to place limitations and limits on what the legal weapons owners can or cannot do. Obviously he does not comprehend what “Shall not infringe” means.

  7. From nj.com:

    The agreement…jettisons Murphy’s other proposed tax increases on sales of cigarettes, firearms, boat sales, limousine rides and a tax on opioid manufacturers, according to two legislative sources who were not authorized to publicly discuss the plan and requested anonymity

    Nice to transparency in government…
    No! Doesn’t sound like a communist $!#T Hole to me….NOT !!!

  8. Funny how all these places with high covid-19 death and infection rates are the ones who required a mask early and shut down everything. Something’s fuckey….

  9. Once a dick, always a dick!

  10. governor Murphy’s kidney cancer may come back.
    I’m sure everyone here wishes well.

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