Court upholds mandatory dealer transfer fees on guns in California

By Chris Eger

The California Department of Justice collects a mandatory DROS fee on each gun sold, a portion of which pays for a program to collect firearms from those no longer legally able to have them. (Photo: la6nca.net)
A federal court last week found that the Dealer Record of Sale fees collected to fund a California program to confiscate guns is constitutional.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit said that California’s allocation of $5 of the $19 fee on firearms transfers to fund law enforcement efforts to collect guns from those the state deems no longer able to possess them met public safety needs.
Unlike many states, the California Department of Justice collects a mandatory DROS fee on each gun sold. The fee provides funding for the state’s controversial Armed and Prohibited Persons System, which sends agents to recover once legally owned firearms from those who have been adjudicated no longer eligible to own them by the state.
Attorneys for plaintiff Herb Bauer, a federal firearms licensee in Fresno, as well as four gun purchasers who paid the mandated fees over a multiyear period, argued it bordered on an unauthorized tax that was expanded over the years to include funding programs that were

Source: Guns.com