Guest Editorial
By Dustin Howard | MAY 4, 2016
Gun taxes, thought policing and the triumph of the ‘Force-Left’
The totalitarian temptation is proving too much for the left across America. Daniel Flynn, in his book A Conservative History of the American Left, contrasted the “Freedom Left,” the benign old-fashioned liberals, versus the “Force Left,” the descendants of Marx that malignantly oppose fundamental rights in pursuit of their radical aims. The Force Left has successfully seized control of their movement and their fundamental transformation is manifesting in current events daily as we watch their struggle for ever more power.
The left as a whole has long been hostile to the Second Amendment, but has been divided as to the regulatory means of mitigating its effects. Background checks, registries, magazine limits have all been incrementalist “salami tactics” to limit gun ownership, and according to them, limit violence.
The latest tack is to levy taxes against weapons and ammunition — some more confiscatory than others. In Seattle, it is 25 dollars per firearm, with a nickel tax on ammunition over .22 caliber, and a 2 cent tax on smaller calibers, which the National Rifle Association is litigating against. In the Northern Marianas Islands, to compensate for losing their handgun ban in court, their Governor imposed a $1,000 “excise” tax on the importation of firearms.
The end game of these taxes is to discourage the purchases, create better documentation surrounding purchases, and limit the accessibility of exercising a constitutional right. But like the poll tax violating the right to vote, a confiscatory gun tax surely violates the individual right to keep and bear arms. If treated like real estate, a firearms tax could become a way to confiscate weapons from those who could not pay the tax, thus discriminating against the poor from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
Onerous laws like this are being enacted all across America, with any given one of them leading to a legal challenge that will work their way to the Supreme Court. As Chelsea Clinton reminded us last week, a divided court without Scalia standing guard could dismantle the Second Amendment at any time, and a Hillary Clinton presidency would hasten that in any way possible. When was the last time children of Presidential candidates rallied support against the Bill of Rights? This blatant contempt for limited, constitutional government is without parallel in any time in our history.
The Force Left also disdains the outcry against their oppressive environmental policies and their underlying assumptions. 17 Attorneys General from Democratic states and territories publicly announced they would use their respective taxpayer resources to challenge and possibly prosecute “climate deniers”. California’s Kamala Harris and three others have gone further, investigating Exxon Mobil for possibly funding research that disputes the anti-carbon narrative.
As the Force Left attains political power by attacking the Second Amendment, the First Amendment is surely at risk too, as with the Internal Revenue Service targeting tea party and other conservative organizations. Or Senate Democrat attempts to modify the First Amendment so Congress can regulate political speech and campaign expenditures.
If the Freedom Left, which once trumpeted their respect for dissent, cannot overcome this hostility to the First Amendment, there is no internal check that will stop the Force Left from becoming progressively hostile to any inconvenient right that runs counter to their passions or prejudices.
Therefore, the thought police will start enforcing their ideological purity beyond the cultural realm that we’ve all grown accustomed to and disgusted with, and will expand to the legal realm, where the left can finally scratch their totalitarian itch and punish their enemies.
President Obama promised a fundamental transformation to his voters in 2008, and the result is that no right truly remains safe; if a right can be chopped up and sold for votes, it’s no longer protected, let alone sacred. Rights are now considered to be expedients of the state who can protect them or summarily dismiss them on a whim. The left no longer defends freedom, meaning that by default, they have unfortunately made it a partisan political issue. Only the middle and the right can stop the Force Left from fundamentally transforming the Bill of Rights out of existence.
Dustin Howard is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.
