Gun Rights Groups Join California Ranges in Filing for Summary Judgement on CA Gun Tax

Last week, Cam noted that two gun ranges fighting the 11 percent excise tax on guns and ammunition in California filed for a summary judgment in the case. The entire thing is an absolute fiasco of a law that never should have happened in the first place, but it being California, it isn’t surprising that it did.

And everyone always knew there would be a lawsuit before the ink was even dry on the bill. How could there not be?

Joining the two ranges, though, are Second Amendment groups, who also want to see this abomination of a law struck down.

From the Second Amendment Foundation via a press release:

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed a motion for summary judgment in Poway Weapons & Gear v. Gonzales, a lawsuit challenging California’s 11% excise tax on firearms and ammunition. 

In July 2024, Assembly Bill 28 went into effect in California, imposing an 11% tax on all firearms and ammunition sold throughout the state. The tax is imposed on the retail sale of “…any firearm, firearm precursor part, or ammunition” sold by licensed firearms dealers and manufacturers in the state. Plaintiffs in the case are Poway Weapons & Gear and Sacramento Gun Range. 

“Fundamental rights cannot be hidden by the state behind a paywall,” said SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that conduct protected by a constitutional right cannot, for any reason, be singled out for special taxation. The right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment is meaningless if the government has the power to prevent the acquisition of arms and ammunition in the first place. And the power to tax is exactly that – the power to make unavailable. The present tax rate itself is immaterial, the authority to tax a fundamental right at 11% is the authority to tax it 150%. And anyone even superficially aware of California lawmakers’ tendencies know how much they love taxes and hate your gun rights.”  

As noted in the motion, “…the State’s tax implicates the purchase of protected firearms and ammunition, which is squarely within the protections of the Second Amendment. As the Second Amendment is ‘not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’ these long-held precedents apply with equal force to California’s excise tax.”

“California is the primordial ooze from which new novel Second Amendment infringement tactics are born,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “If this tax is allowed to stand, it’s only a matter of time before every non-2A friendly state across America adopts similar legislation. California taxes gas to dissuade people from driving and cigarettes to dissuade people from smoking, so it’s no secret what the state doing here: taxing guns to dissuade people from exercising their rights.”

Firearms Policy Coalition president Brandon Combs agreed with that in his own statement, saying, “This unlawful tax scheme is designed to destroy the right to keep and bear arms, and California cannot be allowed to get away with it. You cannot specially tax the exercise of a constitutional right – full stop. If courts allow an 11% tax today, nothing stops them from making it 50% or 100% tomorrow. We are suing to end this direct attack on the rights of peaceable people, and we intend to win.”

This isn’t about raising funds to combat anything; it’s about making it more and more costly to own a firearm. It’s about trying to dissuade people from exercising a basic, constitutionally protected right. Nothing else.

Imagine, if you will, an excise tax placed on computers and internet access, all because you’re trying to combat hate speech. People would be up in arms over the attempted infringement of people’s First Amendment rights, and for good reason. No one would recommend any such thing because they know they’d be eviscerated by the public and even the media.

But when the target is guns and would-be gun owners, we hear nothing but crickets. 

The courts shouldn’t be our best course of action, but we don’t have a lot left, especially in places like California, where literally every advancement on gun rights has come with the sound of a gavel.

So, with that in mind, start throwing some money at these groups, because if California gets away with it, a tax like this might be coming to your state sooner than you might think.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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