USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “Gov. Phil Murphy is proposing to significantly hike fees for buying and selling firearms in New Jersey, a move that would raise the cost of gun permits and licenses for the first time in half a century and likely trigger a legal challenge from Second Amendment advocates,” NJ.com reported Thursday. “Murphy, a Democrat who has already signed half a dozen gun control bills in his first few months in office, has publicly called for raising such fees.”
Of course he did. New Jersey’s draconian citizen disarmament diktats weren’t enough. The new edicts won’t be either. Neither will Murphy’s proposed incremental Intolerable Act. They never will be.
“The plan would raise the cost for handgun purchase permits from $2 to $50; firearms identification cards from $5 to $100; handgun carry permits from $50 to $400; retail gun dealer licenses from $50 to $500; and wholesaler/manufacturer licenses from $150 to $1,500, among other hikes.” theNJ.com report continues. As much as he hates guns not in the control of those working for him, Murphy’s not above looking forward to the prospect of “$1.4 million in additional revenue from the sale of firearms.”
Bear in mind this is just to own a firearm, which is supposedly a right. If you want to carry one in New Jersey, good luck, or I should say “Bad.” Per economist and author John Lott:
“New Jersey is the second most restrictive state on issuing permits, second only to Hawaii. The new rules will codify the practice of the police and judges in giving out permits and prevent legal challenges to denials. No one will be eligible for a New Jersey concealed handgun permit unless they have recently had a violent crime committed against them or received direct, verifiable, significant threats.”
And even that’s no guarantee.
Government charging a fee to exercise a fundamental right is reminiscent of nothing so much as Jim Crow-era poll taxes. And it’s curious, for a party that claims requiring voter ID disenfranchises minorities, they’re fine with doing that with guns to disarm the least prosperous populations among us (and typically the ones that overwhelmingly vote Democrat).
It’s more insidious than that. This is not the first time adding to the cost of a firearm has been used to deprive minority citizens of their rights:
“Among these laws, the forerunners of so-called ‘Saturday Night Special’ legislation, was Tennessee’s ‘Army and Navy’ law (1879), which prohibited the sale of any ‘belt or pocket pistols, or revolvers, or any other kind of pistols, except army or navy pistol’ models, among the most expensive, and largest, handguns of the day. (Such as the Colt Model 1960 Army, Model 1851 Navy, and Model 1861 Navy percussion cap revolvers, or Model 1873 Single-Action Army revolver.) The law thus prohibited small two-shot derringers and low-caliber rimfire revolvers, the handguns that most Blacks could afford.”
And it’s even more insidious than that. Who thinks the mutt that (allegedly) shot up the art festival, a just-released felon and thus a “prohibited person,” gives a damn what fees Phil Murphy tacks on to permits?
Who thinks the Bloods, the Crips, the Latin Kings, MS-13, Vatos Locos, the 18th Street Gang and all the others will have their activities curtailed in the slightest? Gun-grabbing Opposite Day “progressives” are sticking it once more to the “law-abiding” and creating even more incentives for a dangerous black market (and attendant “turf wars”) to flourish.
So look for the killings to continue and get worse, look for opportunistic politicians and the useful idiots that empower them to scream even louder about blood being on NRA’s hands and that “Something must be done!” Look for corporate cowards to cave to whatever demands are issued on social media by “outraged” loudmouths who aren’t even their customers. Look for gutless RINOs and assorted industry quislings to offer up more “compromises.” And look for the very people demanding edicts that make it harder for peaceable minorities to lawfully keep and bear arms to smear majority gun owners as the ones who are the racists.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.