Columnist Argues Colorado Gun Rules Meant to Deter Gun Sales

The United States government has never been above using the tax code as a means of controlling behavior. Look at the taxes on cigarettes, for an example. The taxes are a good chunk of the cost of a pack, and that’s by design. The desire was for the tax code to make the cost of smoking high enough that many would rather just quit than pay the price.

I didn’t work on my mother, to be fair, but it probably worked on others. Smoking is far from as common as it used to be. I remember ashtrays in McDonald’s, after all.

States do it, too. California is bad about it, but they’re far from alone. Why else is a good bottle of bourbon or Scotch more expensive in one state than another, even when it’s pretty common in both? Taxes play a role.

So when gun rights proponent Ava Flannel accuses Colorado’s rules of being meant to deter gun purchases, she’s not coming out of left field.

The class must be 12 hours, divided up into at least two separate days or if you have your hunter’s safety license, you only need a four hour class. I have my hunter’s safety license, but CPW didn’t approve it right away and gave no explanation until I pursued the issue. After completing the $100-$500 course, you must take a test and score a 90% or higher.

The CPW-created course is a dumbed-down version of the required eight-hour concealed carry class with sprinkled propaganda. Instructors are required to discuss firearm suicides and other anti-gun statistics that are widely disputed.

Fifth step! After the instructor enters your data into CPW’s database, you can finally shop for a firearm. At this point you have already spent $182-$872 and you haven’t even bought a firearm. The gun store must verify your eligibility through CPW’s website and then you’ll fill out another background check. Yes, two background checks.

Sixth, you wait the mandatory three-day waiting period. Apparently, waiting and jumping through these hoops wasn’t enough.

After three days, you finally get to exercise your Second Amendment rights, which I know our forefathers didn’t intend for.

As advocates have been saying all along, this isn’t about safety. It’s intended to make the process so difficult that it prevents Coloradans from buying guns, and this is just the beginning. Next session, bill sponsors will call the next SB3 what the first one really wanted to be: an assault weapons ban.

As I noted earlier today, this is simply an attempt to turn gun purchasing into a privilege rather than a right, but it’s also an attempt to deter it entirely for everyone else. Even people who have the money to drop roughly $200 to $900 just to get the go-ahead to buy a particular gun will balk at spending it. That’s a lot of money, and a good AR-15 isn’t particularly cheap.

That’s the point.

See, the taxation authority of the government, any government, is as close to an undisputed power as I think you’re likely to find, even if taxation is theft.

And it is.

What this means, though, is that they will keep using it to “modify” behavior. This is sold as public safety, but that’s because they think it will modify behavior enough that the bad people won’t buy these guns. The fact that the bad people aren’t buying guns from gun stores is irrelevant.

Flannel is completely correct here.

Not that anyone in charge in Colorado gives a damn.