Exercising the Right
Biden’s Gun Tax
Breitbart News reported on November 23 about some tax proposals from Joe Biden that might end up costing gun owners around $34 billion in new taxes on firearms and ammunition they already own. Among Biden’s proposal is a $200 tax for each AR-15 that a gun owner possesses, as well as on other guns that Democrats identify as “assault weapons,” and also a tax on gun owners of $200 for every “high capacity” magazine in their collection. According to numbers provided by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Americans own 434 million firearms, with around 20 million of them being so-called assault weapons. Running those numbers brings you to $4 billion, and if you add the tax on the “high capacity” magazines, you’ll get another $30 billion. These numbers are stunning, but they show the depths to which anti-gun politicians might sink if they can’t get the outright ban they’ve long sought and instead use these indirect measures. The anti-gun politicians might fail to ban your guns, but they could make the cost of owning them so prohibitively high that you voluntarily give them up because you can’t afford them any longer.
2020 Was a Record Year for Gun Sales
The DailyWire reported on November 5 that “more guns were purchased in 2020 than at any other point in American history, with Americans buying more than 16.5 million guns, 1.6 million more than they purchased in 2016, the last record year.” These numbers were driven in large part by the anxiety relating to the coronavirus and the lockdowns, as well as the societal unrest and riots that engulfed many cities across the country this year.
The DailyWire cited research done by Stephen Gutowski at the Washington Free Beacon, who wrote that the “National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade group, also estimated nearly seven million people purchased a gun for the first time between January and October…. The record sales come during a year in which Americans have faced a pandemic, economic downturn, prisoner releases, racial tension, and rioting. Those factors, as well as a contentious presidential election, have driven sales throughout the year, according to industry experts.”
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