New Jersey has never made it easy for law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm. Before the Bruen decision, it was downright impossible for most. It was one of those states that said you needed a good reason to get a permit, and as at least one reader informed me directly, “self-defense” wasn’t considered a good reason. They can’t do that now, but that doesn’t mean they’re making it much easier.
What they do now is charge a lot of money for a permit, and that makes it difficult for many people to get one, especially the poorer folks in the state, which, ironically enough, are often the people most in need of a carry permit as they live in high-crime neighborhoods.
Luckily, several towns have found a way around that. They have to collect the fee. They don’t have to keep the money, and so they started refunding the fee, and now the number of communities doing so is up to 23.
The New Jersey carry permit fee refund movement continues to grow. In March, TTAG reported that West Milford had become the 18th city in the state to vote to refund all or part of the state-mandated fees required to obtain a concealed carry permit. Since then, five additional municipalities have joined the effort.
The Berkeley Township council — representing the community also known as Bayville — recently became the 23rd New Jersey municipality to rebate the municipal portion of the carry permit fee to Garden State gun owners. The council voted to refund $100 of the $150 municipal fee to citizens who obtained their carry permits through the township.
Current Carry Permit Fee Structure
New Jersey’s current carry permit fee structure was adopted in direct response to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which forced the state to abandon its previous “may issue” carry permit framework and begin issuing permits as a matter of right. The state’s response was to charge $200 every two years for permit renewal — $150 to the issuing municipality and $50 to the state — making it one of the highest carry permit fee structures in the country.
Gun-rights advocates dubbed the new framework the “carry killer” law, arguing that the fee was deliberately designed to deter exercise of the constitutional right the Supreme Court had affirmed.
In September 2025, a Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel struck down the $50 state portion of the fee in Koons v. Attorney General of New Jersey. The $150 municipal portion was not directly addressed by that ruling, leaving the question of municipal fees to be addressed either through additional litigation or through voluntary action at the city level.
The voluntary action route is what gun-rights organizations have pursued.
Ideally, the $150 portion would also get struck down in due course, but for now, this is a different approach that has actually been yielding some very positive outcomes for many.
Residents in these communities might have to hand the money over, but they get it right back, which means it’s not impacting their finances quite the same way as if the fees were being kept. Sure, you still have to have $150, but you can use part of your rent money for that, then pay your rent on time. Most people can swing it if they think about it for a moment.
And that changes pretty much everything.
Unfortunately, there are always going to be a few areas that won’t do the refund, such as cities like Trenton and Newark, but if enough of the smaller communities do, it creates an interesting situation for the Garden State.
Either they’ll try to force the issue and make the towns keep the money, which will make it pretty clear that this is about making it harder to get a permit versus literally anything else, or they’ll do nothing and watch as their homicide rate drops, particularly in these communities. I’ll admit there are other possibilities, including combinations of potential outcomes, but that’s what I’m seeing as I write this.
None of which makes New Jersey’s anti-gun stance look good in the least.
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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