Gun Tax Holiday Advances in Georgia Legislature

The bill started off as something fairly simple and, surprisingly, something with bipartisan support. Then it changed.

See, the Georgia bill now covers more than a sales tax break on gun safes–something even anti-gunners support, much of the time–but then became a sales tax holiday for gun sales and mostly covers gun safety training.

Considering how important hunting is to the Georgia economy, that’s probably a smart move in many ways. It does make it a bit harder to get the bill through, though. Especially since it doesn’t cover gun safes quite as extensively now.

Even so, it advanced through the General Assembly. 

A bill originally designed to encourage safe gun storage now includes a controversial tax break on firearm purchases and a proposed database that was seen as the central element of a school safety bill has been dropped in response to privacy concerns. The compromises were forged as lawmakers head into the final week of the 2025 legislative session – the first since a 14-year-old accused gunman killed two other students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in September.

Lawmakers have until this Friday to send bills to the governor, who then has 40 days to decide whether to sign them into law.

Safe storage incentive spliced with sales tax holiday for guns, accessories

A House bill that would have created a $300 income tax break for firearm safes and other safe storage devices now only applies to gun safety training.

And the bill – which had passed overwhelmingly in the House and with bipartisan support – has been spliced together with a Senate bill creating a sales tax holiday in October for the purchase of firearms, ammunition and other accessories, like scopes and magazines – as well as gun safes.

The Senate Finance Committee advanced the measure Friday.

…

Rep. Mark Newton, an Augusta Republican who is the bill’s sponsor, said Friday that the proposal is a way to promote gun safety training in a “Second Amendment-friendly way” while also saving taxpayers money.

Democrats immediately objected.

“We took a responsible gun ownership bill and turned it into a gun proliferation bill,” Sen. Jason Esteves, an Atlanta Democrat, said after the committee vote Friday.

Yeah, I fail to see the problem with that, myself.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d prefer the bill to have the tax break for gun safes to be year-round. Including gun safety training in such a bill makes a lot of sense, and I’d love for that to be year-round, too.

But I refuse to actually get bent out of shape because there’s a tax holiday for something that is explicitly protected by the United States Constitution. 

If it’s a gun proliferation bill, I’m not going to bat an eye since the people who will be taking advantage of it aren’t the people gun control advocates claim to be concerned about.

For what it’s worth, not every Democrat in the state opposes this. One Democrat said it was a start and that he’d support anything that advanced gun safety. In this case, this is a bill that will advance actual gun safety instead of the typical “gun safety” bills that are just gun control pretending to be something else.

Now, the trick is to get this voted on quickly enough so that it will go to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature. As time is running short on the legislative session, that’s not going to be as easy as it should be.