The recent move by Englishtown Borough, New Jersey council members to return $150 of the state’s $200 concealed carry permit fees to local residents who’ve applied has garnered the support of Second Amendment groups like NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (where, in full disclosure, I serve as an unpaid board member).
It’s also starting to garner fans in other localities. Shortly after Englishtown adopted its resolution, Franklin Township followed suit, and CCRKBA reports that a third municipality has now voted to refund those fees to residents as well.
“We’re delighted that officials in Dumont, a borough in Bergen County, have adopted Resolution 2025-216 to eliminate the municipal portion of the permit fee,” said CCRKBA Managing Director Andrew Gottlieb. “State lawmakers set the high permit fee in an effort to discourage average citizens from applying for carry permits. We joined forces with our friends at NRA/ILA and NJFOS in an effort to provide relief, and we’re happy to say it’s beginning to work.
“But by writing the law to apportion 75 percent of the fee back to local municipalities,” he added, “the state opened the door for this refund effort, and we hope to expand this project to every community in the Garden State. Our purpose is simple. We want to make exercising the right to bear arms as affordable as possible so that no New Jersey resident can be literally disarmed by a burdensome permit fee requirement.
“Working with our colleagues in the Second Amendment community to counter the state’s outrageous fee scheme is a great endeavor,” Gottlieb stated. “It’s almost like playing Robin Hood, and our hats are off to all of the community officials who have shown such loyalty to their constituents.
“We’re going to continue this effort until we’ve succeeded across the state,” he vowed. “We know this isn’t going to happen overnight, but it is going to happen. New Jersey’s beleaguered, law-abiding gun owners deserve no less.”
As Gottlieb notes, New Jersey lawmakers raised the fee for a carry permit from $50 to $200 after the Supreme Court ruled the state’s “may issue” licensing system unconstitutional, in what was clearly an attempt to make carry permits less attractive to the public. But $150 of the $200 fee goes to the locality where gun owners apply, with the state receiving the remaining $50.
That’s opened the door to resolutions like the ones adopted in Englishtown, Franklin, and now Dumont. New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate vice president Joe LoPorto says that Vernon Township in Sussex County could be the next to adopt the measure, so the effort is still gaining steam.
The more the merrier, and every locality that returns their portion of the concealed carry fees to residents puts pressure on other local governments to do the same. It also sends a message that the state’s $200 concealed carry fee is excessively high to begin with, which in turn will help gun owners and 2A organizations challenging the state’s gun control regime in court.
That’s why it’s critically important that Garden State gun owners approach their own council members and encourage them to do the same. Obviously there are plenty of places in New Jersey that are going to balk at doing anything to support the Second Amendment, but there are dozens of townships and boroughs where elected officials and their constituents should be sympathetic to the cause and wiling to embrace this common sense step in the right direction.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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