Anti-freedom politicians want to price you out of your rights.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), along with more than two dozen co-sponsors, recently introduced legislation that, if passed, would impose a 1,000% excise tax on the purchase of “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines.
Beyer introduced similar legislation last year, stating at the time that “Congress must take action to stem the flood of weapons of war into American communities.”
Of course, the ultra-wealthy would still be able to pay such a tax, but the most vulnerable would effectively be priced out. It’s a little like when anti-gun politicians, such as Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), want to take away your rights, but also want you to pay for their armed security. “Armed security for me, but not for thee,” is how America’s 1st Freedom contributor Charles C.W. Cooke put it.
And law-abiding Americans have unfortunately become used to repeated, dishonest attempts at restricting their constitutional rights. Knowing that widespread gun control is unpopular and unconstitutional, anti-freedom politicians routinely seek other methods to get their way.
Former President Barack Obama’s (D) disastrous Operation Chokepoint was an attempt to use banking regulations to choke off the exercise of Second Amendment rights, and Joe Biden may want to try to revive his old boss’s nefarious scheme.
Last year, a group of U.S. senators sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission demanding it go after legal gun sellers under the most-spurious of rationales.
And President Joe Biden’s (D) repeated calls for a repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act would lead to firearms manufacturers being put out of business thanks to the costs of countless frivolous lawsuits that would be unleashed if the law is ever repealed. In fact, it’s the one thing he’d ask God for, as he said in 2021.
But it’s not just politicians, others in positions of power have tried similar things, such as when credit-card companies attempted to create a de-facto registry of gun owners—a plan NRA helped expose last year–by introducing a specific code for tracking firearms purchases. If gun-control groups had their way, credit-card companies wouldn’t even allow their cards to be used for the purchase of firearms. Thankfully, enough pushback caused these companies to rethink this plan.
Though Rep. Beyer’s latest bill is unlikely to gain much traction, it shows the real goals of gun controllers: make the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms functionally impossible by any means necessary.
