The House should pass a proposed bill that would make it illegal for states and municipalities to raise taxes or fees on firearms and ammunition,
The Washington Times said Tuesday.
Writing in an editorial, senior opinion editor Emily Miller, said the latest plan of anti-gun lawmakers is to hike taxes on guns and ammunition to stop law-abiding people from buying firearms.
"It's the perfect storm of liberalism — more revenue for a bigger government and fewer people keeping and bearing arms," she said.
Miller noted that President Barack Obama's hometown of Chicago started the movement, enacting a $25 tax on new gun purchases, and in February, California Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez and 28 other "ultra-liberals" introduced a bill to create an excise tax of 10 percent on any concealable weapon.
In addition, she wrote that states nationwide have introduced similar measures in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. shootings.
But the new House bill, proposed by Missouri Republican Sam Graves, makes such taxations illegal and prevents raising taxes to pay for background checks.
"When you place this outrageous tax on the sale of ammunition and firearms, it’s intended to curtail those rights," Graves told Miller.
The National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation are both endorsing Graves' bill, which comes as several states, including California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Washington are considering tax proposals on weapons and ammunition.
"The states with the most radical proposals are Maryland and Connecticut, both of which are proposing raising taxes on ammunition by 50 percent," Miller noted. "Alcohol, which is not guaranteed by the Constitution but leads to more deaths than firearms, is the only other item in the Free State that is taxed higher than the 6 percent sales tax, but it is only 9 percent."
The restrictions will likely be found unconstitutional, Lawrence Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports foundation, told Miller.
"These anti-gun politicians are clearly trying to unduly burden the exercise of the Second Amendment by pricing firearms and ammunition out of reach of many law-abiding Americans," she quoted Keane as saying.
Miller said liberals "love to raise taxes to push their social agenda. In their worldview, individuals are not capable of being responsible for their own health and well-being."
However, she said, unlike cigarettes or alcohol, guns are protected by the Constitution.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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