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Today, viagra approved the Oregon State Police held their first “fee review” meeting to discuss their proposals for fee increases for background checks.
As you would expect, adiposity 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?-[source]
I read the letter and cost review written by ISS’s David Yandell. Mr. Yandell’s review is based on taking apart an integrated, multi-purpose group within the Oregon State Police (OSP), and then justifying each of the “fee units” as if each unit had to support itself as a separate business entity. This is a grossly inefficient approach, particularly since all the people in ISS do essentially the same job: computer searches for background checks and fingerprint management. The fact that the proposed fees for the Firearms and CHL units require only a small fraction of ISS’s resource requirements yet the proposed fee increases place most of the cost burden on gun owners is an slap in the face to gun owners. Another slap to the face is the fact that Oregon utilizes the FBI’s NICS system when OSP does the background checks, thus–as noted above–charging gun owners twice for service.
I have written a letter to my Representative to the Oregon legislature expressing my concern, together with a request that she introduce legislation to revamp Oregon’s firearms laws.
I plan to attend the June 2nd meeting in Bend. I urge any of you in Oregon to attend the nearest OSP meeting on this topic and express your outrage.