State Legislature
The following states are still in SESSION:
Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
Florida: On Dec. 3, the House Judiciary Committee passed HB133 on a vote of 13-7. This bill restores young adults’ ability to purchase firearms legally. The next stop is before the full House after the 2026 legislative session begins. In 2026, the Florida legislature prohibited 18-to 20-year-olds from buying firearms.
New Jersey: On Thursday, the Senate Law & Public Safety Committee passed S.4360 on straight party lines. The bill mandates local zoning laws to regulate outdoor shooting ranges when a range is proposed. Both the NRA and the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs opposed the bill. The bill statement reads:
“This bill requires a municipality in which an outdoor firing range is located to adopt a zoning ordinance establishing safety guidelines for outdoor firing ranges.”
New Jersey Municipal fee: Under current New Jersey law, anyone with a permit to carry a handgun must pay $200 every two years: $50 to the New Jersey State Police and $150 to the municipality that issues the permit. These steep costs grew out of New Jersey’s 2022 “carry killer bill,” passed after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen—a landmark case supported by the NRA. That legislation quadrupled the pre-Bruen fees and sought to label much of the state as off-limits for lawful carry. These excessive costs are now a central issue in the NRA-backed lawsuit Siegel v. Platkin, filed against the New Jersey Attorney General.
In September, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in Siegel that the $50 state fee likely violated the Constitution because it didn’t directly relate to the costs of processing permits or maintaining public order. Following that decision, towns throughout New Jersey began rejecting or refunding the municipal portions of these fees, recognizing that they’re both redundant and unnecessarily high.
On Nov. 25, Howell, in Monmouth County, became the 12th municipality in New Jersey to refund all or substantially all the fees required to obtain a permit to carry. The list now includes towns in seven counties across the Garden State. This joint initiative has been led by NRA, New Jersey Firearm Owners Syndicate, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Under NJ law, holders of a New Jersey permit to carry a handgun must pay $200 every two years, with $50 paid directly to the New Jersey State Police and $150 paid to the municipality that issues the permit. Those high fees were a result of New Jersey’s response bill to the 2022 landmark decision in the NRA-backed case of NYSRPA v. Bruen. NJ’s so-called ‘carry killer bill’ that was passed in December of 2022 quadrupled those fees from the pre-Bruen levels. In addition, the bill attempted to declare nearly the entire state a gun-free zone. These high fees are a central part of NRA’s case against the NJ Attorney General, Siegel v. Platkin.
The list of towns now includes: Englishtown (Monmouth County), Franklin Borough (Sussex County), Dumont (Bergen County), Hardyston (Sussex County), Hopatcong (Sussex County), Vernon (Sussex County), Cresskill (Bergen County), Butler (Morris County), Medford Lakes (Burlington County), Readington (Hunterdon County), Beachwood (Ocean County) and now Howell Township (Monmouth County).
With the last addition of Howell, in just the towns that have passed this resolution so far, over $125,000 per year in exorbitant and unconstitutional fees have been eliminated, and with nearly 200,000 people living in those municipalities, a growing percentage of the population of the state now lives in places free of these financial barriers to exercising a core constitutional right.
Steven Gutowski reports on slowing gun sales
Black Friday and November gun background checks were down noticeably this year, but the industry says sales are still fairly strong by longer-term standards.
Key numbers
- Black Friday week had about 530,000 gun background checks, roughly 80,000 fewer than last year, a drop of about 13.6 percent.
- Black Friday itself saw 165,183 NICS checks, well below the 2023 Black Friday record of 214,913.
- For all of November, NSSF estimates 1,408,230 gun-sale-related checks, about a 7 percent year-over-year decline.
Trend since the pandemic
- The slump continues a comedown from the pandemic-era surge, when gun sales and related checks hit unprecedented highs.
- The article pins the softer demand on low consumer confidence and less fear of new gun bans under the new Trump Administration, after several years of elevated post-2020 sales.
How NICS data is used
- FBI’s raw NICS numbers include everything from permit checks to other non-sale transactions, so NSSF scrubs that data to better approximate actual gun purchases.
- Even that cleaned-up estimate misses some sales because private, non-dealer transfers often do not require NICS checks, and 28 states let certain permit holders buy from dealers without an additional NICS check.
What it means for 2025
- Despite the recent drop, NSSF’s CEO says background check levels still show “consistently strong” firearm sales compared with historical baselines.
- December is usually the peak month, but 2025 is on pace to have the lowest level of sales-related NICS checks in at least five years
