There’s something deeply unsettling about creating a specific tax for guns and ammunition. It’s one thing if they’re caught up under a broader umbrella like sales taxes, but it’s another when they’re targeted with a tax just for being guns and ammo.
Governments tax things that they don’t want people doing, such as taxes on tobacco and alcohol, so the rational takeaway here is that such efforts are an attempt at discouraging people from owning guns.
And Massachusetts is considering a bill that would do just that.
A joint Massachusetts legislative committee is considering a measure that would increase the state tax on all firearms, gun parts, and ammunition sales to 11 percent.
The Massachusetts Joint Committee on Revenue last week held a hearing on H 3082, an act establishing an excise tax on guns and ammunition. The bill would impose an additional 4.75 percent tax on the existing 6.25 percent sales tax for such items. The new excise tax would explicitly fund “community-based public health interventions and research to prevent gun violence; and services for gun violence survivors and victims’ family members.”
Even guns and ammo purchased outside of the Commonwealth by Massachusetts residents will have to be reported and properly taxed, with the promise of a $1,000 fine for non-compliance.
“This law foists the societal problem of violent crime and the responsibility to pay for it on the shoulders of law-abiding sportsmen and women,” notes the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, which testified against the bill. “Additional costs to hunting and recreational shooting could potentially impact participation in hunting and recreational shooting, ultimately taking funds away from conservation efforts.”
There’s also a companion bill in the state Senate, S.1652, which was filed by Massachusetts Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Stone Creem, who is a notorious anti-gunner, much like Rep. Mindy Domb, who is the sponsor of the House version mentioned above.
I fully expect this one to be defended much like how hunting and fishing license fees are used to fund wildlife conservation efforts, but that’s a suprious comparison, to say the least. Those fees are directly related to the activity hunters and fishers engage in.
Your average gun buyer isn’t involved in violent crime. The idea that they should foot the bill for violent crime prevention, particularly so-called gun violence, is quite a bit different.
Then we have the fact that this amounts to a poll tax. It’s a tax explicitly enacted on exercising a constitutionally protected right.
It’s not designed to cover any burdens on the state by law-abiding folks buying and using firearms. It’s designed to punish them for the actions of people who will not be paying this tax. Criminals don’t go to gun stores. They buy them illegally, and that’s outside of any taxation scheme you care to name.
Meanwhile, poorer folks in Massachusetts will have to pony up still more money in order to purchase a firearm, thus making even the cheapest gun that much less affordable. While 4.75 percent may not look like all that much, it adds up pretty quickly on high-dollar purchases like firearms.
Then there’s the recurring costs of the tax on ammo sales, which means it’s going to be an issue for those who are less than well off financially.
The point here isn’t to fund anything, though. The point is to discourage gun ownership entirely. It’s a constitutionally protected right that anti-gunners in Massachusetts can’t ban, no matter how much they want to, so they’re using their power of taxation to push it farther and farther out of reach for many and just too damn annoying for others.
It’s an attack on the Second Amendment, no matter how they try to spin this one down the road.
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