Democrats have a bad habit of trying to talk about fairness. Everything in their view should be fair, and if it's not, at least by their definition of "fair," then there should be a law. Now, fairness is a good thing, but life isn't fair. We can't mandate things to God, the universe, or whoever you want to believe divvies out the ups and downs of life.
But if you support what Colorado is currently trying to do to gun owners, I don't want to hear a blasted thing about "fairness" from you ever again.
Colorado has an initiative on the ballot for this upcoming election that would create an excise tax – often called a "sin tax" because it was often applied to things like liquor and tobacco products – on each and every gun sale, all to fund something that has nothing to do with gun owners:
Few things are more frustrating to lawful gun owners than politicians trying to fund one government program or another by placing additional taxes on them, even though they played no hand whatsoever in causing the problem being addressed.
Such is the case in Colorado where a ballot initiative would place an additional 6.5% excise tax on the retail sale of firearms, firearm parts and ammunition to fund domestic violence programs in the state.
According to a report in the Greeley Tribune, Colorado domestic violence services received 15,000 calls in a single day from victims requesting services. And next month voters will be voting whether or not to approve Proposition KK, which would fund those programs on the backs of gun and ammo purchasers.
If the ballot initiative passes, crime victim services, like district attorney’s offices, law enforcement and nonprofits, will receive most of the revenue—about $30 million—through grants to provide on-site crisis response, counseling, legal advocacy and emergency financial assistance. And while no gun owner would argue that those services aren’t important, it’s simply unfair to fund those programs by overtaxing gun owners.
A similar law is on the books in California, and it's being challenged in the courts right now under the Bruen decision standard that all gun control laws must have a historical analog from around the time of the nation's founding, which this law doesn't have.
But Colorado law means that this measure can't be just from the legislature. It has to be voted on by the people of Colorado, and those people need to understand just how wrong this particular measure is.
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Taxes for particular purposes aren't unusual. Gasoline taxes paying for road maintenance makes sense because the vast majority of gas sold goes into cars that create wear and tear on those roads. Fees for hunting licenses going toward wildlife conservation efforts make sense because hunters benefit from those efforts, too.
But this involves taking money from people who just want to exercise a constitutionally protected right and then using it to fund something that's not related to where the tax is coming from.
Or are Colorado lawmakers trying to imply that gun owners engage in domestic violence regularly?
Then we have the fact that this amounts to a poll tax, which the courts have repeatedly struck down – rightly, I should add – as unconstitutional. How is making people pay a fee to exercise their right to keep and bear arms somehow different than making someone pay a fee to vote?
On every level, this is wrong.
However, life isn't fair, and Colorado has kept on drinking the gun control Kool-Aid like it has for the last handful of years, so this will probably pass and impact people who want to buy a firearm, at least until the courts shut it down once and for all.
