On February 5th, the day of the NJ primary election, I headed down to the Fort Lee Police department to submit an application for 2 hand gun purchasers permits. NJ has ridiculously strict gun laws. They require you to get a background check, including sending questionnaires to 2 acquaintances and a FBI check, each time you want a purchasers permit. And of course it costs $18 to do so even though if they pulled me over they could check it for nothing. Since they are required to do the FBI check at the time of purchase, which costs $15, there appears to be no good reason but racking in more fees. But there is… since to purchase a gun from a fellow New Jersey resident I have to also have that permit and they won’t be doing the background check. Now how many people who do personal transactions do you think really obey that part of the law? I’d suspect few. So anyway, February 5th I handed the paperwork and money order into the records department and when asked how long it should take I was told 30ish days. Fast forward to th week of April 14th. I’m fairly annoyed that I’ve heard nothing back. I’ve been screwed over before by NJ over my FID so I had a suspicion that they had either been sitting on it or was otherwise trying to prevent me from exercising my negative and positive right to keep arms. So I call them up several times over the span of the week. “The chief’s on vacation”, “he’s out sick”… leave a message on his voice mail. A few days go by and no reply. Call back… “I can’t find your folder, let me get back to you.” Well he’s not gotten back to me but ironically a letter showed up in xyz’s mailbox addressed from the Fort Lee Police department. It was the “should this person be allowed to have a gun” form. What was the post date? April 21st, 2008. Funny… that would mean they have been sitting on my file for over 2 months and that the whole “It’s lost” thing was a lie because he said clearly he would search for the info and contact me when he found it. These bureaucrats generally can’t stand the idea of an armed public and have nothing but contempt for us. I got nothing but bad attitude from my old police department, who screwed me over by making me do the entire FID acquisition again in Fort Lee (including another $50+), and from Fort Lee police department except for the officer who took my fingerprints. Everyone else from the records handler to the chief have been incompetent, patronizing and rude.

And their other failure? The inability to pickup recycling. They force us to recycle and put out these little blue barrels out every other Thursday for pickup. Funny… I walked outside this morning (Friday) and the entire street was lined with filled blue recycling barrels. This isn’t the first time. Several times before they felt our street didn’t need to have our recycling picked up. Cardboard is especially fun because everyone ends up leaving it out for a few days because we for some reason believe that just maybe they’ll show up late and whisk it away. Of course what really happens is that it rains and we have blobs of mushy cardboard all up and down the damn road. How much would you like to bet the town wouldn’t pick up the cost of the private trash removal if we hired them in their stead or the fines we could receive for having wet boxes laying around the sidewalk?

If it wasn’t for it’s relative closeness to two major cities and the cheapest gas prices in the nation… Jersey would have nothing.

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