Two major gun-rights groups have filed a motion asking the Superior Court of California for the County of Sacramento to grant summary judgment in a case challenging the state’s 11% excise tax on firearms and ammunition.
In the case of Poway Weapons & Gear v. Gonzalez, the plaintiffs argue that the law violates the Second Amendment by unconstitutionally infringing on the right to keep and bear arms.
The brief, filed by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), and other partners, argues “…the State’s tax implicates the purchase of protected firearms and ammunition, which is squarely within the protections of the Second Amendment. As the Second Amendment is ‘not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’ these long-held precedents apply with equal force to California’s excise tax.”
SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack said that fundamental rights cannot be hidden behind a paywall.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that conduct protected by a constitutional right cannot, for any reason, be singled out for special taxation,” Sack said in a news release announcing the filing. “The right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment is meaningless if the government has the power to prevent the acquisition of arms and ammunition in the first place. And the power to tax is exactly that—the power to make unavailable. The present tax rate itself is immaterial; the authority to tax a fundamental right at 11% is the authority to tax it 150%. And anyone even superficially aware of California lawmakers’ tendencies knows how much they love taxes and hate your gun rights.”
Alan M. Gottlieb, SAF founder and executive vice president, said that California is the “primordial ooze from which new novel Second Amendment infringement tactics are born.”
“If this tax is allowed to stand, it’s only a matter of time before every non-2A-friendly state across America adopts similar legislation,” Gottlieb said. “California taxes gas to dissuade people from driving and cigarettes to dissuade people from smoking, so it’s no secret what the state is doing here: taxing guns to dissuade people from exercising their rights.”
Speaking for his organization, FPC President Brandon Combs said the tax scheme is designed to destroy the right to keep and bear arms, and that California cannot be “allowed to get away with it.”
“You cannot specially tax the exercise of a constitutional right—full stop,” Combs said in a news release from the organization. “If courts allow an 11% tax today, nothing stops them from making it 50% or 100% tomorrow. We are suing to end this direct attack on the rights of peaceable people, and we intend to win.”
Ultimately, the brief called for the court to overturn the tax law and to ban its future enforcement.
“Because the State’s tax implicates conduct covered by the text of the Second Amendment, the Constitution presumptively protects the conduct the State seeks to regulate, and the State bears the burden to justify its law as consistent with our Nation’s history of firearm regulation,” the brief stated. “The State cannot do so. Indeed, history and precedent militate strongly against any tradition of singling out fundamental, constitutional rights for special taxation.”
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