It might be tricky, but I think the standard would be: Does this tax serve a legitimate state interest, or is it intended to make it more difficult to purchase a gun? If the latter, then no-go. If you just went in to court with “Well, we thought that would be a good rate”, I suspect your case would be thrown out. If you detailed some “cost to society” that you were trying offset, then that might fly.
Several reasons, one of which I brought up in post #33. But it serves as a good sounding board since it’s a cherished right by the left, and the tactics used by the right to limit abortions are similar-- i.e., an attempt to limit abortions without there being a legitimate state interest.
You could more easily argue that the consequence of guns is recreation, hunting, target shooting, home defense, law enforcement and collectibility. I’d be willing to bet that 99.99% (or more) of all guns and ammunition sold have only been used for those law-abiding and peaceful uses.
That’s the thing- people are freaking the hell out because 12 cops got killed. It’s tragic, but about 9-10 times that number are killed each day across the country in car crashes, and we just accept that as a matter of course.
In fact, in a 2 day period, more people are killed in car crashes (~180) than total policemen killed in the line of duty over an entire year (~130). About three times as many people die in wrecks (30800) as are killed in homicides(11800), and about 1.5 times as many as die in firearm-related suicides (19392)
Hell, six times more people are murdered with knives each year(1836) than with rifles (351). Handguns account for the vast, vast majority of murders by gun or otherwise.
But apparently rifles are scary, so we have to freak out and run around like Chicken Little, without actually thinking about it or doing anything rational.
As a data point, a judge dismissed a suit that claimed Seattle’s $25 per gun and 2 or 5 cents per round of ammunition was unconstitutional. The decision is likely to be appealed.
A similar tax in Chicago has been paid into escrow while it is being disputed in court.
So the question might be asked, how much is too great a tax on a constitutionally protected right? That has been answered for voting… any tax is too much. And for spreading religion by selling religious materials… a $1 per day or $15 per year license fee was too much (amounts as of 1944). $1 and $15 in 1944 would be $13.59 or $203.90 in 2016 dollars.
So far, absent any actual proposal, your plan appears to be “do nothing”. That may well be “rational” within your presumed parameters. But how long will that option be viable? You complain that the people are not reasonable, they “run around like Chicken Little”. is that going to get better? People will calm down once there are a lot fewer such incidents as have inflamed the public? When will that be, do you think? Or don’t you?
I’m starting to come around to the point of view of these NRA-types. I think all these shootings are a false flag operation, but they are perpetuated by the NRA and gun manufacturers to sell more guns
I doubt it. I would bet that any significant tax on guns that was intended to reduce the availability and affordability of guns would get overturned even if the court replaced Scalia, Alito Thomas with three clones of Roberts and Kennedy.
They might approve of more gun control schemes but probably not that one. The constitution still means something in that building.
Actually this case was not a constitutional challenge - it was a challenge based on Washington State’s preemption laws. The question presented was whether the tax was in substance a regulation. It is being appealed. Here is the actual ruling.
This lawsuit is based in part on a constitutional challenge, but also on preemption grounds. The writing in this lawsuit is not very good.
I agree that you are probably not limiting my right to self defense by limiting my right to a 21st gun. I probably couldn’t carry 20 guns so how could that 21st gun help me defend myself? But, what harm are you avoiding by preventing me from getting that 21st gun? It really seems like limitations for the sake of limitations.
Anyone that has more than half a dozen guns or so is starting to enter the realm of gun collector and enthusiast. And much like pornography, gun collection is probably protected under a milder standard than the protection for political speech or guns for self defense. But you STILL need something more than “I don’t like guns” to be able to get past constitutional scrutiny for a law like that.
The two most common rights that we compare to gun rights are first amendment rights and abortion rights.
Abortion rights are frequently brought up by gun rights advocates because it allows them to compare the treatment of a penumbra right like abortion to an explicitly enumerated right like gun rights.
The first amendment is used because it really does seem like the closest analogy in the bill of rights.
All the way back to John Marshall in 1819. The federal government had established a national bank, which many states opposed. In Maryland, they tried to shut down the bank by enacted a high tax on banks which didn’t have a state-issued charter. Marshall ruled against Maryland, saying that the states “have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress” and that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy”.
This Manufacturers Excise Taxes places taxes on an interesting variety of items besides guns and ammo: tires, eyeglasses and hearing aids, bows and arrows, coal, vaccines, and gasoline and diesel fuel. I remember when I worked on a farm, we had gasoline and diesel fuel that was dyed to indicate it was for non-taxable use by farming equipment.
New York doesn’t tax newspapers or magazines. It’s caught me by surprise when I had to pay sales tax on them in other states.
“Generally”? So, sometimes they were issued weapons? Who paid for them? If you were mustered to answer a grave threat, would you take your households only weapon with you? But “generally”, that’s what they did? Leave their family defenseless and go protect somebody else’s family? You can prove any of this?
And where were these militia mustered? Among the staid and safe burghers and businessmen of New York? Or out on the frontier, where the indigenous population was still grumpy about this whole “manifest destiny” thingy?
Was a “well-regulated” militia what the frontier wanted? Would they not have preferred the protection of an actual Army? Preferably one paid for by taxes on the entire nation, taxes on people in the East who had no threat? I think that is more likely, people being people. But it was not a practical solution, the recent Republic could not possibly afford to protect them, even if they wanted to.
So, they did the next best thing, reassure them that the had every right to protect themselves! No, don’t thank us, really. You are entirely free to leave your home defenseless against savages, and go gather your militia.
And everyone on the various frontiers owned a musket? All of them? Can this be proven, outside of NRA sponsored historical research? Not that I don’t trust them. I don’t, but that isn’t it. One might think so, given that there is no indication of any effort to *provide *a weapon. But then again, if you don’t want to pay for it, it might be easy enough to assume that no such expense was justified.
And just by the by…what did the words “well regulated militia” mean in 1792?
I think that there’s a large, vocal minority, and that the majority of the people are either pro-gun, or don’t care one way or the other.
All I’m saying is that all the panic about “assault weapons” is baseless. In terms of the actual nation, the number of people killed by rifles in total is comparable to such dastardly thing like falling out of bed (450 people/yr), drowning in bathtubs (300 per year), toxoplasmosis from cat litter boxes (300 people/yr). And not all of those 351 rifle deaths are “assault rifle” deaths- they could be bolt action rifles, 22 rifles, etc…
It’s the same old story about child abductions, etc… people see a few high profile things, and any semblance of rational risk assessment goes out the window, and stupid stuff gets done to solve a problem that’s not even a problem, and overall we’re worse off for it.
Well, the federal courts have ruled on the matter of acquiring new firearms. The District Court ruled the CNMI’s ban on importation or possession of a gun unconstitutional.
Radich v. Guerrero from the US District Court for the Northern Marianas Islands
Someone linked the 1792 law in a pervious post. Is that not good enough?
Maybe not all of them but I think the vast majority of households had at least one gun. But I suppose there were some people who didn’t have a gun for some reason or another.
Near as I can tell, it meant well trained and disciplined militia. What do you think it means?
Probably true, because Roberts is a conservative and Kennedy is in many respects libertarian. The difference is that Scalia, Alito, and Thomas were/are batshit crazy. And that’s how you got the 5-4 vote on Heller. Replace Scalia with someone sane and it would be 5-4 the other way. Because rationality and the best interests of society still mean something in that building.
As far as I can glean, at the time of the writing of the Constitution, it meant something along the lines of well organized, correctly functioning, properly calibrated, etc…
So reading that phrase along with the subsequent Militia Act of 1792 requiring the miltiamen to provide their own weapons, I look at the 2nd Amendment as being a way to ensure that the militia (i.e. all male citizens between 18 and 45 years of age) would be properly armed; if they were prohibited from keeping and bearing arms, it would preclude the militia being “well regulated” by the definition of the time. After all, if you’re expected to show up with your own gun, but your state or municipality has forbidden it, it doesn’t really make for a militia that functions as expected.
In my mind, this actually implies a modern-day interpretation that weapons like the AR-15 would be* explicitly allowed* under that line of thought, as they’re eminently suitable for militia use, while other guns like handguns and sporting weapons would be less protected, being less suitable for militia purposes.