Oregon State Police Seek Huge Fee Increases to Exercise Your Gun Rights

Oregon State Police Seek Huge Fee Increases to Exercise Your Gun Rights

Oregon –-(AmmoLand.com)- Today, the Oregon State Police held their first “fee review” meeting to discuss their proposals for fee increases for background checks.

As you would expect, gun owners are being asked to subsidize most of the OSP’s budget with fee increases of 100 to 300 percent.

The OSP has suggested that gun purchase background check fees go from $10.00 to $28.00, almost tripling the cost of a mandated background check for a gun purchase.

The fees for fingerprints for a concealed handgun license will be doubled from $15.00 to $30.00

Most states charge nothing for a background check for a firearms purchase. Furthermore, those states that use NICS as their “point of contact” do not record any information on the make, model, caliber or serial number of the gun. Oregon does record this information, charges a fee, and has used their database against gun owners when no crime was committed and no criminal investigation was on-going.

Some have suggested that they do not want the Feds doing the background checks in Oregon because they don’t trust them. But the fact is, the Feds are already involved in our background checks because the State Police check with NICS as part of their investigation. So why are we paying twice (once through the fee and once through our taxes) for a “service” we should not be compelled to submit to and certainly should not have to pay for?

The State Police told us that gun background checks make up about 23% of the checks they do. But at the new suggested fee, they would be collecting almost $9 million dollars from gun owners in every biennium just in background checks for gun purchases. This does NOT include the fees they would collect from people applying for CHL’s at the new doubled rate which would be about $819,420.00 in 2011.

The State Police have stated that their required budget for the 2011-2013 biennium is about $17 million. So gun owners will be asked to pay more than half of the budget for less the one quarter of the checks. This is clearly outrageous.

Gun owners are not getting a “service” from the State Police. They are compelled to pay these taxes to exercise a “right.”

We strongly recommend that you attend one of the fee review meetings, if you can, to express your opposition to fee increases of 100 to 300 percent.

• You can see the proposed fee increases here.
• You can see a schedule of “fee review” meetings here.
• You can get more details about the OSP background checks here.

If you cannot be at one of these meetings, please contact the OSP ID unit to express your opposition to these giant tax increases.

You may e-mail David Yandell. [email protected] or Patricia Whitfield [email protected]

About:
The Oregon Firearms Federation has proven itself to be Oregon’s only no compromise lobbying group, OFEF takes the same tough stands and serves as a vehicle for educating gun owners, promoting their rights and when necessary, fighting the freedom haters in court. Visit: www.oregonfirearms.org