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Court upholds NYC $340 permit fee
Kwong v. Bloomberg, opinion here. The court finds that the $340 fee is meant to recover costs of administration, which the City claimed were actually a bit higher than this figure. Creative accounting, I suspect.
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Free state IDs for those unable to afford them are still considered to be too burdensome and likely to have disparate impact, yet these sorts of fees are OK? Decision process: Chose your preferred outcome (Constitution notwithstanding), them make up any sort of arguments that seems to support it.
Having had a NYC concealed carry license prior to moving west I can believe that an actual accounting would find the administrative costs to be equal to or greater than the fee charged. This is due to the structure of the permiting process within the NYPD. A reasonable process that assumed the citizen had a right to the arms in question and was meant to weed out the few not eligble in a "shall issue" system would be much cheaper.
Couple of things
1) A no-permit system costs nothing, since there is no administrative cost.
2) Of course there is a big problem with racial disparity. This one does not pass the Duke test.
3) The USSC commented already on fees for enumerated rights. Gura pointed this out in Heller, but did not seek a ruling on that issue.
4) The sole purpose of government is to secure
the rights of the people. No government has a
legitimate reason to seek fees for the exercise
of a right.
Frank did a good job in his post hopefully this travesty will be won on appeal.
I sure hope this goes beyond the NY court. That kind of fine is ridiculous, harsh, and could be considered raciest. I mean any time something people want and need has this kind of price tag associated with it, it is called raciest. It seems NY will do anything to prevent it's citizenry from owning firearms legally.
You make gun illegal you turn a lot of law abiding citizens into criminals. No?