Obtaining your first firearm in NJ.

I will keep this blog completely devoid of any political debates due to my personal convictions. This is simply an account of the first steps of firearm ownership in New Jersey that southern and mid/western Americans might find interesting.

I went shooting for the first time in my life a few years ago with a friend of mine. I really enjoyed it, and found it extremely relaxing and exhilarating all at once, so I decided to buy my own long gun.

And so commenced my journey to become a FID card holder.

The FID card never expires (unless the law changes, which has been discussed), and allows you to buy any NJ legal long arms and pistol ammunition. In order to own a handgun, you need to apply for and buy an individual handgun permit, which is a whole different can of worms.

In order to obtain my FID card, I went to my town’s police station on my lunch break. After asking for the application form, I was told to come back after 4:00, as the officer that handles this paperwork was currently on patrol.

I came back after my shift and spoke with the officer, who gave me the forms to fill out at home. I brought them back complete with proper identification, mental health record release forms, a $60 application fee and the contact information for two character witnesses. My county seems to have farmed out background checks and fingerprinting to a 3rd party, as I then had to make an appointment and drive about 45 minutes south to the closest fingerprint scanning depot. This depot was, I think, an old storefront or row home, and consisted of just one room about the size of my living room where a middle-aged foreign woman scanned your digital fingerprints and sent me on my way.

This is where things can get murky. You’re supposed to hear back from your police station within 30 days, but your application is totally in the hands of the police, and there’s little to no recourse for them if they drag it out 6 months or longer, as I’ve often heard is the case. It is supposedly somewhat dependent on the police's relationship with their residents, or the particular officer's view of citizens owning firearms.  My police station, however, got back to me in about 3 weeks.

At this point, I returned to my police station, was taken to a back room where my inked thumb print was applied to my new FID card, and I was done!

The card is really just business card paper that’s slightly larger than a driver’s license, so I decided to get it laminated.

What many people in NJ don’t realize is that you need an FID card in order to legally own a BB gun. There’s no national registry for BB guns, so any NJ resident can buy one at a sporting goods shop in PA and DE without needing to show any identification. Once you bring it into NJ, you had better have your FID card in your pocket!