Revenue Raising
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 03/26/2012
The above opinion was offered in arguing that the Obamacare case should not be delayed until 2015, as was being argued by pro-Obamacare lawyers. Justice Ginsburg seemed to think the argument obvious enough, even when arguing against a delay tactic brought by people she tends to agree with.
I’ll get back to Ginsburg in a few minutes. First, a brief history lesson:
In 1934, the US Congress, under FDR, passed what is in my opinion the worst piece of legislation ever imposed on this nation, The National Firearms Act. Prior to this law, firearms were treated just as any other product for sale. You could purchase them through the mail, no licensing, no background checks, no limits on the kind of firearm you could buy, it was simply purchasing a legal product, on the open market. The way I read the bill of rights, you are only guaranteed the _right_ to purchase two types of products… printed materials, books, newspapers, etc… and firearms. IMHO, buying a gun should be no different from buying a book or magazine. You should be able to buy them online, through the mail, or whatever, without any sort of legal requirements.
Whoa there… I can just here the screaming in the background at that statement… What about criminals? Ok, here’s a silly question for you… how effective do you think our current gun control laws are in keeping guns out of the hands of criminals? Based on what I read in the paper, laws don’t seem to have much of an effect at all. Hey, folks, here is a news flash for you… CRIMINALS DON’T OBEY LAWS! All these hoops we have to jump through to buy a gun, all they do is inconvenience honest gun owners. Felons don’t go to a gun shop to buy a gun; they either steal one, or buy one that someone else stole. Gun laws have little to no effect on criminal gun use. Note that the highest levels of crime are in locations where anti-gun laws are the most stringent. I stand by my opinion… purchasing a gun should be no different from purchasing a newspaper. Gun laws don’t prevent crime.
Ok, my opinions aside, the NFA created classifications of firearms, forced certain ‘bad’ types of firearms to be registered, and taxed those ‘bad’ firearms at a rate of $200 per item. In 1934, a Thompson sub-machine gun cost $194. The Thompson is a fairly complicated piece of machinery, and quite expensive in comparison to other firearms of the time. A good shotgun would run about $50. Under the NFA, you could buy that pump shotgun, as long as the tube was over 18”, and over 26” in total. Want a gun sized for your youngster so you can teach him or her how to shoot? That $50 youth model shotgun is suddenly $250, with a bunch of paperwork and a long delay to boot. You’re just not going to buy it, right? That, folks, is exactly the point!
To make matters worse, not only is your $50 shotgun taxed at four times its value, and your high-end Tommy gun taxed at more than 100% of its value, but if you want a $15 suppressor so that you don’t bother the neighbors with your back yard shooting range, that was taxed at $200, as well. For what amounts to a muffler for your gun… something with which perhaps all us older gunnies wouldn’t be using the word ‘huh’ quite so much. If you haven’t ever fired a gun with a suppressor, it’s nowhere near its common name of a ‘Silencer’. It quiets a gun just enough that it’s not damaging to your hearing, but not much more than that.
The NFA put an end to private research and development of automatic firearms. Why spend the time, energy, and money to invent the next version of the Tommy-gun, when you can’t sell it to the public? Yeah, you could target the armed forces and police sales, but the army buys very few gun designs. Police sales alone just couldn’t justify the expense. Without the opportunity to sell these guns to the public, the market just shut down, until the cost justification returned.
In the mid 50’s, due to inflation, the $200 tax, while still high, no longer seemed so unreasonable. Full auto research and development started up again, Eugene Stoner designed his AR series, Gordon Ingram did the Mac10, even Bill Ruger did machine gun work early in his career. Even better, many overseas gun designers started importing full auto firearms. Various H&K guns, Uziel Gal’s designs, and many others started rolling into the USA. Full auto was affordable again! Well, we can’t have that, can we? In ’68, the government again stuck its nose into American gun owners business, instituting the ‘sporting’ clause, shutting down imports of anything that didn’t pass the ‘sporting’ test (the meaning of which is still being argued). Still, we could at least buy Colt AR’s and other full auto guns, at a reasonable cost.
In 1986, the Huges amendment put an end to all pretense of the NFA being a revenue raising measure. They shut down the NFA registry completely, no new firearms accepted, period. The 150,000 or so guns that are on the registry are it. Unless something changes, those guns are all that will ever be available to the public. Let’s see, a small, fixed number of guns, a growing population, and add in the fact that guns are machines, and as so, they wear out… yeah, the prices skyrocketed. You can walk into your local gun dealer and purchase a brand new AR15 for something under $1,000. Add a few bucks worth of parts to make it full auto, and you’re a felon. You can’t buy a new full auto gun at all, you have to buy an old one that someone registered prior to ’86, and you’ll pay 15 to 20 times what its worth!
These three laws are why our armed forces are still using guns from the 1950’s and before, or else importing guns from elsewhere around the world. How’s that make you feel about our national security… when the guns our troops use are made somewhere else! Open up the market… the next John Browning is just waiting to be able to apply modern materials and techniques to the challenge of full-auto firearms.
Getting back to Justice Ginsburg… A $200 tax on an item that costs under $200, sometimes as little as $10, isn’t a revenue raising measure, it’s a penalty, designed to prevent you from purchasing that product. As Justice Ginsburg said today: "This is not a revenue-raising measure, because, if it's successful, they won't -- nobody will pay the penalty and there will be no revenue to raise". There are about 150,000 machine guns on the registry, since 1934. That’s about $380,000 per year. Anyone know what the BATFE’s yearly budget is? I’d be willing to bet that taxes on machine guns won’t cover one percent of their operating costs. The Huges amendment removes all pretense… you can’t pay the $200 tax to register your new full-auto gun, no matter how much you might want to.
Enforcement of the NFA fell on the Treasury department. Why is this non-revenue generating law being enforced by tax agents? It would be unconstitutional to ban firearms, so… they didn’t ban them, just taxed them. Besides, we have all those ‘tax agents’ who used to enforce prohibition laws… Hey, now they have something to do! All of a sudden, thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens are in possession of an NFA regulated firearm without possessing the applicable tax stamp. Just imagine, if you will, what Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry would have said about that!
So, what is a tax collection agency doing enforcing tax laws that impose taxes that are against the law to actually pay, and why, exactly, do they need armed aircraft, machine guns, and armored vehicles to enforce those tax laws? Google Ruby Ridge, Ken Ballew, the Move Raids, Waco Siege, and Project Gunwalker to learn more about the (unintended?) consequences of these heavily armed tax collectors.
Folks, it’s well past time for the ‘86 Hughes Amendment, the GCA of ’68, the ’34 NFA, and the agency charged with enforcing these laws, to all go the way of the dodo. Gun control laws don’t have the desired effect, are unconstitutional, and have a devastating effect on our nation’s security.