Gun Tax Pushed on Role Model

$1000 Gun Tax

The U.S. Territory of Northern Mariana Islands imposed a new gun tax earlier this month. The new tax? $1000 per hand gun purchased in the territory.The Territory Governor, Ralph Torres, said that the new tax is meant to improve the safety of law enforcement and the community. In a statement released by the governor, he said:

It’s something that none of us want and we want to make it as strict as possible.

In the same statement released by the governor, Rep. Angel Demapan said that,

We aren’t trying to make it difficult for people, we are trying to make it safe.

To those of us who support the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and own firearms, this is an alarming piece of news. Previous attempts at gun control have failed because the right to keep and bear arms is protected by that pesky Constitution.The move to tax gun ownership is an attempt to get around the Constitution and given the way taxation has been ruled on in recent years by the Supreme Court (see The Affordable Care Act), this is alarming.

Supporters of taxation at this level will argue that they are not barring anyone from purchasing or owning firearms. They are going to argue that they have the right but that right comes with additional expense and that expense needs to be paid by those wishing to exercise their rights.Additional taxes on firearms has been done on a smaller scale in some areas already. Here in Chicago's Cook County for example, there is a $25 violence tax that gets assessed on each firearms purchase in the county. This tax is ostensibly collected to help defray the cost of hand gun violence in Chicago. In reality, it's an additional burden applied to law-abiding gun purchasers.If you are a person concerned about the rights of law-abiding gun owners, you should be concerned about this news. We are going to be seeing more of this as various state and local governing bodies jump at a new idea to curb gun ownership.We will keep everyone updated as we continue to watch for more news of attempts to go around the Constitution to hurt law-abiding gun owners. We know there will be more news on this and we have not heard the last of this.