The federal government uses taxes to encourage and discourage certain behaviors.
Taxing a right is a sneaky way to subvert the Constitution.
And a top Republican is trying to stop Joe Biden from taxing you to exercise this constitutional right.
Senate Republicans working on repealing federal excise tax on firearms
The first major gun control law at the federal level was the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA), which was a part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for Crime.
Congress passed the bill in response to the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre and shootings by organized crime during Prohibition.
The NFA imposed a $200 excise tax on short-barreled shotguns, suppressors, machine guns, and certain other destructive devices.
$200 is about $4,700 today.
The goal of the NFA was to make the tax so prohibitively high that it would cut down on the transfer of these firearms.
And the ATF admits the tax was designed “to curtail, if not prohibit, transactions” involving NFA firearms.
NFA firearms still require the same $200 tax first instituted in 1934.
U.S. Senators Tom Cotton (R-AK), John Barrasso, and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) are introducing the Repealing Illegal Freedom and Liberty Excises (RIFLE) Act to repeal the federal excise tax on NFA firearms.
The bill would eliminate the NFA tax by repealing Section 5811 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.
“Law-abiding gun owners in Wyoming should not be forced to pay excessive taxes for exercising their Second Amendment rights,” Lummis said. “While President Biden and Senate Democrats continue to wrongfully target responsible gun owners, I will continue fighting to preserve the people of Wyoming’s right to keep and bear arms.”
Taxation being used to subvert the Constitution
Second Amendment attorney Oliver Krawczyk told Fox News Digital that taxing firearms is “indistinguishable from poll taxes.”
“This would undermine the constitutional basis of the NFA altogether, because it’s a purported exercise of Congress’s enumerated taxing power,” Krawczyk explained. “But the Founders would have scoffed at the notion that it could be a felony to possess a short-barreled rifle or shotgun in the first place.”
Taxing firearms is a way to subvert the constitutional rights of gun owners through an undue burden.
Americans shouldn’t have to pay the government for the permission to exercise a right granted to them by the Constitution.
Representative Ashley Hinson (R-IA) introduced the companion bill in the House.
“The federal government should not be placing financial barriers on the inalienable rights of Americans,” Hinson said. “This unconstitutional tax on certain firearm purchases is a direct violation of the Second Amendment and must be repealed.”
Democrats at the state level have begun a push to use taxation as a backdoor means to enact gun control.
California became the first state to pass an additional state excise on the sale of firearms and ammunition.
The law added an 11% tax on top of existing federal taxes.
Democrats are using the tax code as a scheme to subvert the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
Keep Fully Loaded Magazine in your sights to stay on top of exactly what the Gun Control Lobby is plotting, how guns actually make Americans safer, and fun stories surrounding the regular exercise of your Second Amendment freedoms.