I don’t like gun taxes, and not just because it makes my own purchases more expensive. In essence, they become poll taxes. Sales tax is different since it’s on all products, but gun taxes are a tax on the exercise of a basic, constitutionally protected right.
Unfortunately, the courts haven’t quite seen it that way.
Yet.
Colorado created a tax on guns recently, among other things, and the state is currently slugging it out in court to defend it. In that fight, though, they just took a shot on the chin.
A Colorado judge on Monday refused to dismiss El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen as a defendant in a suit challenging a 6.5% tax the state placed on firearms.
Colorado voters approved the tax via Proposition KK, which imposed the duty on firearms, firearm parts and ammunition in the November 2024 election. District Court Judge Andrew McCallin explained two reasons why he denied Allen’s motion to dismiss in a brief one-page order.
“Defendant Allen first argues that Plaintiffs lack standing to bring this action against him. However, Magnum Shooting Center of Colorado Springs points out that it would potentially face prosecution if it refused to comply with C.R.S. §§ 39-37-101 et seq,” McCallin wrote. “This threat of possible prosecution is sufficient to confer standing on Defendant Magnum in this action. Furthermore, the complaint states a plausible declaratory judgment claim against Defendant Allen.”
Allen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In the initial complaint filed in March 2025, the Colorado State Shooting Association, the Firearms Policy Coalition and the National Rifle Association accused the state of “infringement by taxation.”
That’s precisely how it should go. The threat of being arrested should be more than sufficient for standing in a case like this. They shouldn’t have to risk their personal freedom and their gun rights in order to defend their gun rights, especially on something like this. The judge made the absolutely correct call here.
The truth of the matter is that while 6.5 percent doesn’t sound like much, it isn’t the only tax. There’s the state sales tax of 2.9 percent, plus a federal excise tax of 10 percent for handguns and 11 percent for long guns. Yes, those need to be abolished, too.
So, if you save up $500 for a handgun. The problem is that with all of the taxes, that’s actually $547. For some people, that’s trivial, but for a lot of others, it’s not.
Now, if you want to spend $600 on an AR-15, after taxes, that becomes $656.40…only you’ll also need to drop another $200 or so on the mandated training class you now need in order to purchase one in Colorado.
These taxes are framed as excise taxes, which are basically taxes on luxuries. Those who passed them see guns not as an essential tool for personal liberty or part of a person’s personal security plan, but as something that you don’t need and should probably be discouraged from wasting your money on.
And for a gun store, if they don’t collect these taxes, they go to prison. In a challenge on the taxes, that should be enough, and I’m glad the judge sees it that way. The fact that the taxes will also dissuade some from buying guns, thus hurting Allen’s business, is also true, but kind of irrelevant. It’s going to hurt others’ ability to purchase guns, and that’s the issue.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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