New Jersey: West Milford in Passaic County becomes the 18th Town in New Jersey to Nullify Carry Permit Fees Through an Initiative Backed by NRA, NJFOS, and CCRKBA.

On March 4^th, West Milford, in Passaic County, became the 18^th 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 eight 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 NJ 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. NJ’s Carry Killer bill, passed in December of 2022, quadrupled those fees from the pre-Bruen levels in addition to declaring 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 of 2025, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit struck down the $50 portion of New Jersey’s carry permit fee on the basis that the purpose of the fee 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 last year, towns across the Garden State have begun rejecting the state-mandated municipal portion of fees on the basis that they are redundant and far more than what is necessary to cover the administrative cost to processing an application.

With the addition of West Milford, in just the towns that have passed this resolution so far, over half a million dollars in exorbitant and unconstitutional fees paid by applicants across those towns since the law was changed have been eliminated, and with hundreds of thousands of 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 Beachwood (Ocean County), Butler (Morris), Cresskill (Bergen), Dumont (Bergen), Englishtown (Monmouth), Franklin Boro (Sussex), Hardyston (Sussex), Hopatcong (Sussex), Howell (Monmouth), Medford Lakes (Burlington), Plumsted (Ocean), Readington (Hunterdon), Riverdale (Morris), South Toms River (Ocean), Toms River (Ocean), Vernon (Sussex),  Wall Township (Monmouth), and West Milford (Passaic).

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