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 05.17.10
State Police Seek Huge Fee Increases Exercise Your Rights. |
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 changes of twice to almost
three times current charges.
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.
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.
david.c.yandell@state.or.us
or
Patricia Whitfield
patricia.whitfield@state.or.us
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© 2000 - 2011, Oregon Firearms Federation. All Rights Reserved.
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