That’s A Dozen, Cousin: 12 New Jersey Towns Refunding State’s Punitive Carry Permit Fees

On November 25th, Howell, in Monmouth County became the 12th municipality in New Jersey to refund all or substantially all the fees required to obtain a permit to carry. The list now includes towns in seven counties across the Garden State. This joint initiative has been led by NRA, New Jersey Firearm Owners Syndicate, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Under New Jersey law, holders of a New Jersey permit to carry a handgun must pay $200 every two years, with $50 paid directly to the New Jersey State Police and $150 paid to the municipality that issues the permit. Those high fees were a result of New Jersey’s response bill to the 2022 landmark decision in the NRA-backed case of NYSRPA v. Bruen.

New Jersey’s so-called ‘carry killer bill’ that was passed in December of 2022 quadrupled those fees from the pre-Bruen levels. In addition, the bill attempted to declare nearly the entire state a gun-free zone. These high fees are a central part of NRA’s case against the NJ Attorney General, Siegel v. Platkin.

In September, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruling on Siegel, struck down the $50 portion of New Jersey’s carry permit fee on the basis that the purpose of the fee likely failed “to meet the expense incident to the administration of the [licensing] Act and to the maintenance of public order in the matter licensed.” Beginning in June of this year, towns across the Garden State have started rejecting the state-mandated municipal portion of fees on the grounds that they are redundant and far exceed what is necessary to process an application.

With the addition of Howell, in just the towns that have passed this resolution so far, over $125,000 per year in exorbitant and unconstitutional fees have been eliminated, and with nearly 200,000 people living in those municipalities, a growing percentage of the population of the state now lives in places free of these financial barriers to exercising a core constitutional right.

The list of towns now includes: Englishtown (Monmouth County), Franklin Borough (Sussex County), Dumont (Bergen County), Hardyston (Sussex County), Hopatcong (Sussex County), Vernon (Sussex County), Cresskill (Bergen County), Butler (Morris County), Medford Lakes (Burlington County), Readington (Hunterdon County), Beachwood (Ocean County) and now Howell Township (Monmouth County).

This project has largely been accomplished through a grassroots initiative. The policy brief and model resolution can be found here.