After almost a decade of trying, California has finally passed an unconstitutional excise tax on guns and ammunition.
Assuming Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., signs the bill, California gun owners and gun buyers will, for a short time at least, be paying an additional 11% tax on top of the 10 to 11 % federal excise tax they already pay. Bringing the total tax to almost 22%.
Explanation courtesy of the Sacramento Bee.
We will get to why the tax is unconstitutional in a moment.
For now, let’s discuss strategy and how the left plays the long game and the right plays the win the next election game.
The revenue from this tax is not going into the state’s general fund where it will be mixed in with money from all the other tax gouging the California does.
No. This money is specifically earmarked "to fund violence prevention efforts."
The bill is another excellent example of the friend-enemy dichotomy that drives politics on the left and utterly escapes politicians on the right.
Obviously the enemies California is punishing are gun owners.
Short term friends rewarded are the useful idiots who support gun control efforts.
The long-term effects of this bill are the real victory.
The key is "to fund violence prevention efforts."
This money will go to hire those on the left working in anti-gun non-profits and those on the left in state government who will dispense the grant money.
It creates an enduring cadre of left-adherent workers and voters who will be foot soldiers supporting future left-leaning causes.
It’s enduring infrastructure that works against everything we believe.
And the best part is these left-activist’s salaries will be paid entirely by the enemy.
Us in other words, while their friends don’t pay one red cent.
Compare this huge victory to what passes for strategy on the right.
Conservative legislatures may pass a bill that allows "constitutional carry" or the legislature may relax the rules governing concealed carry.
This rewards their friends on the right who will now enjoy their Second Amendment right with fewer infringements.
It can even inadvertantly reward enemies on the left who finally decide to accept responsibility for their own defense.
But that hypothetical bill does nothing to advance or establish conservative infrastructure over the long term because our side is in something of an ideological box.
- We can’t advocate an additional excise tax on tofu because conservatives want to keep taxes low.
- We can’t support creating a new state bureaucracy to track defensive gun uses because conservatives don’t want to support the expansion of government.
Increasing revenue or expanding government to reward our friends is out.
That’s where most conservatives stop, which is a mistake.
We may not increase revenue, but that doesn’t mean depriving our enemies of revenue is out. The same legislature that expands Second Amendment rights can also cut funding for the pet projects of the left.
Even red state governments are full of grant-making functionaries whose sole purpose in life is to fund left-adherent non-profits, researchers, and university departments.
Find two or three of these enemy beachheads in government and cancel them.
And we don’t mean cut. We mean eliminate.
In that way friends are rewarded and enemies punished.
Currently our comb-over conservatives occasionally reward friends while pretending the enemies aren’t there. Which is why we’ve been losing ground for 30 years.
And why is the bill unconstitutional?
The reason dates back to a U.S. Supreme Court McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, (1819).
The court ruled against a tax Maryland levied on bank notes issued by banks not chartered by the state.
Maryland’s goal with the tax was to make the notes so expensive those banks would go out of business.
In overturning the tax Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, "The power to tax involves the power to destroy."
California’s tax is obviously a punitive tax directed at gun owners designed to make it harder to exercise their Second Amendment Rights.
In other words, it’s just a new infringement on a constitutional right.
In the meantime, even a flawed law will prevent gun owners from buying a new weapon or ammunition for the old while they wait for the law to be overturned in court.
The left wins even when they lose.
Our side needs to start thinking long term strategy and they need to do it now.
The left has a 30 year head start.
(A related article may be found here.)
Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Reagan, is a Newsmax TV analyst. A syndicated columnist and author, he chairs The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Michael is an in-demand speaker with Premiere speaker's bureau. Read Michael Reagan's Reports — More Here.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)" Read Michael Shannon's Reports — More Here.