Posted on 04/10/2013 10:37:41 AM PDT by neverdem
‘I’m not asking to take away people’s guns,” Maryland legislator Jon Cardin nervously told Politico this week. “I’m just saying that for an activity that is relatively dangerous, obviously, people who participate in that activity should pay the full costs of that activity.” America, witness a guileful new tactic of the gun-control movement.
Cardin (a nephew of U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat), who wishes “to tax bullets at 50 percent,” was outlining an increasingly popular progressive idea: If you can’t regulate something, why not tax it in lieu? Similar proposals — by which states impose specific levies on purchases of firearms and assorted peripheral items — are now being considered in California, Nevada, and New Jersey; and in Chicago, which city has apparently learned nothing from the very public slap on the wrist that 2010’s McDonald v. Chicago delivered, a $25-per-firearm “fee” was just put into effect. Other states already assess charges on guns — including Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney infamously raised rates by 400 percent (from $25 to $100) while governor. Such measures have traditionally been justified on grounds of economic necessity or, more candidly, as a way of limiting gun sales. The “participants should pay” card is a new one.
As a matter of general principle, I’m not wild about the modern tendency to reduce the value of everything in society to the sum of its externalities. Liberty has a value in and of itself and, in America, it is codified stridently and without caveat into our highest laws. Still, while attempts to measure how much freedom we “need” are usually fruitless and invariably inconsistent, they are, unfortunately, likely to increase. The closer we edge toward socialized medicine for all — and the more that we expand the scope of its consequence-blunting bedfellows in the welfare system — the worse the temptation will get. If the state is on the hook for your behavior, it has greater incentive and justification to regulate it. As I learned in Britain over my first 26 years, whether it is drinking and smoking, eating red meat or salt, snacking on grapes in a vehicle, or having any other form of private fun that gets a bad name among the neo-puritans of the modern Left, the government needs only to issue the magic words “public health” and a cast of fashionable acolytes will rush to its side to be censorious on cue.
The idea is not total bunk, of course. Leviathan or no Leviathan, our unalienable rights do have externalities. But the thing is: Almost everything does. Speech, as Sonny Bunch has observed, can be dangerous. After all, “newspapers advocated for war in their editorial pages . . . and reported false intelligence to the masses.” Elections are expensive, too, he notes: “What about a modest, $25/vote tax on those who wish to exercise their rights in such locales”? Bunch’s tongue is firmly in his cheek but his overarching point is strong: When it comes to our basic rights, the rule of thumb is that as little as possible should be put in the way of their exercise. The Second Amendment is often treated differently from the other component parts of the Bill of Rights, but it damn well shouldn’t be. Unless you consider that the right to bear arms is less important in a republic than is the right to vote — which I most decidedly do not — then putting a special tax on firearms is no less outrageous than putting a tax on voting. Why one but not the other? (The inconsistency here is outrageous: Sex has negative externalities, too. Let’s see how using that as a justification for regulation goes . . . )
This being a matter of basic principle, for once there is no need for an endless dissection of the Constitution’s meaning. The states in question do not tax only certain guns and bullets but all guns and bullets — including those that nobody disputes are fully subject to constitutional protection. Given that federal law prohibits Americans from buying handguns across state lines without incurring expensive FFL (federal firearms license) transfer fees — and that states tend to regulate the nature of other out-of-state gun purchases — this gives the residents of those states no option but to pay the taxes if they wish to exercise their basic right to keep and bear arms. This is unacceptable and it is capricious, and if you want to see just how indefensible it is on principle, try asking someone who claims that voter IDs are an improper obstacle to voting why they simultaneously support taxes on firearms.
The measures are downright useless, to boot. Whatever the apostles of taxation might have you believe, “fees” do have the effect of “taking away guns,” because they severely limit the ability of the poor to buy them. Wealthier gun owners, meanwhile, continue to buy guns as they did before but end up paying a little more to do so. And criminals? They remain unaffected. As the Los Angeles Times observes:
A 5 percent tax on a $300 handgun amounts to an extra $15. A person bent on mass murder would hardly be discouraged by a low gun tax, and it would take many years for the higher retail costs to filter down to the criminal market in second-hand guns; moreover, a criminal who needs a gun as a primary tool of his trade would hardly be put off by a slightly higher price.
Too much of that sort of reasonable argument, and I’ll have to conclude that the L.A. Times has something against America’s children.
The setup is even more risible when it comes to bullets. As Kelly Phillips of Forbes observes, to believe that such taxes will do anything to reduce crime requires one to suspend one’s disbelief to a frightening degree and to argue that criminals are likely to think: “Well, I would kill both of those folks but that extra five cents on the second victim would just be too much. I have to save up this month.”
Fewet [sic] than 10 percent of criminals convicted for gun offenses buy their weapons in shops. As taxes are levied only in shops — not on the street — law-abiding gun owners end up “paying” for the consequences of behavior that the vast majority of them would never countenance, while the bad eggs escape tax-free. Jon Cardin’s claim that “people who participate in [an] activity should pay the full costs of that activity” is disingenuous in the extreme. What Cordin is suggesting is akin to taxing potatoes to pay for the consequences of potato guns. Those who create the externalities are not paying much at all; that honor, as ever, falls to their victims.
— Charles C. W. Cooke is an editorial associate at National Review.
Next Maryland legislator Jon Cardin will want do the same for Archers.
Your government is now all about tyranny and despotic control.
This is the same thing that they do/did with tobacco, cigarettes and cigars, etc. The precedent is there. Not saying I agree with it, but it will happen...
The Liberal had their Reichstag fire with the Sandy Hook shooting and like the Nazis are using this as a pretext to end individual rights starting with the Second Amendment.
Cardin is the sort who will want to tax any man with a penis longer than his own.
She sprang forth fully armed out of the barrels of blazing guns,
midwifed by Lady Liberty,
and spanked by the hand of Doctor Constitution!
Thus shall Precious Freedom, Fully Armed,
once more Spring Forth and
shout Her Mighty Battle Cry!!
The first thing that such a huge tax will do, will be to cause Indian tribal reservations to sell ammo along with the fireworks and tobacco products that they normally sell. The second thing it will do, will be create a real underground reloading bootlegger community of tax dodgers that makes prohibition look like child's play.
People will start driving to other state's for vacations just to buy ammo. This is going to get so interesting.
How sad.
Sounds just like a poll tax. And that was decided to be unconstitutional a long time ago.
Regarding the title: I think that is the point. Only the evil, criminal and twisted will be running things. The law abiding will be the ones in prisons and camps. They want their immorality and control, D^&% it and they’ll get it any way they can.
Sad.
Swimming is dangerous. Are they going to tax people using public pools, or people with private pools, or people who swim in rivers/streams? Riding bicycles is dangerous. Will they hike the tax for purchases of bicycles, or use of them? Skateboards are dangerous. Will they have a tax on those? Driving is dangerous. Will there be an increase in taxes on driving? Taking baths is dangerous. How about a bathtub or shower tax?
whatever you tax , you get less of.
which is why Dems love taxing income and energy.
just wait in your little unheated hovel for your gubmint cheese to arrive then thank your overlords for your free cheese.
Yes, of course, but THAT’S THE WHOLE IDEA.
Liberals hate and envy the empowerment furnished by the ability to defend home and hearth.
We saw the same attitude on the part of parliament during the reign of George III.
These two-faced dregs of humanity don’t care a fig about crime - they all have personal bodyguards.
What they care about is holding onto and wielding political and social clout.
I am, but only as long as all positive externalities are part of the calculation. However, the market should determine that balance, and not government.
Guns and ammo just may be the exception.
Unless, of course, that activity is buggery.
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