Anti-gun politicians who cannot ban firearms outright have found another way to attack the right to keep and bear arms: make exercising it progressively more expensive.
Second Amendment Foundation attorney and Director of Legal Research and Education Konstadinos T. Moros takes direct aim at that strategy in his second law review article, Excising the Second Amendment: Why Taxes Targeting Common Firearms Are Unconstitutional.
Applying the historical test required by New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Moros argues that taxes singling out firearms, ammunition, and related products have no well-established analogue in America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
His conclusion reaches beyond California’s openly hostile 11% “sin tax” and Colorado’s 6.5% gun tax. It also challenges the federal Pittman-Robertson excise tax and National Firearms Act taxes to the extent they apply to commonly owned arms protected by the Second Amendment.
California’s Gun Tax Shows the Real Burden
Moros distinguishes special gun taxes from ordinary sales taxes that apply generally to consumer goods. The constitutional problem arises when lawmakers target firearms and ammunition for an additional financial penalty simply because they disapprove of armed citizens.
California demonstrates how quickly those government-imposed costs accumulate.
Using Moros’s hypothetical, a handgun that would ordinarily sell for $500 in Los Angeles rises to $584 after the federal and California excise taxes are included. Add California’s $37.19 background-check charge and the city’s 9.75% sales tax, and the buyer pays $678.13 out the door.
A first-time buyer who also needs California’s firearm safety certificate pays $703.13, approximately 28% more than the handgun would cost with only the generally applicable sales tax.
That burden falls hardest on working Americans who need an affordable firearm for self-defense. Constitutional rights do not belong only to those wealthy enough to absorb every tax and fee a hostile legislature dreams up.
History Does Not Support Taxing Common Arms
Moros’s historical survey found no widespread American tradition before 1900 of imposing special per-unit taxes on commonly possessed firearms.
Founding-era militia laws frequently required citizens to own arms and sometimes protected those weapons from seizure for unpaid debts or taxes. Import tariffs existed, but they applied to broad categories of goods and were intended to encourage domestic arms production—not discourage Americans from acquiring firearms.
The relatively few 19th-century laws that specifically taxed weapons generally targeted bowie knives, pocket pistols, and other arms many people of the period considered “dangerous and unusual.” Those laws were concentrated primarily in Southern states, sometimes applied only when the weapons were carried, and ordinarily left the prevailing military and self-defense arms untaxed.
Some Reconstruction-era taxes were even used to price newly freed Black Americans out of gun ownership. Those racist regional outliers cannot establish the representative national tradition Bruen requires.
Pittman-Robertson Is Not Exempt
The paper’s treatment of the Pittman-Robertson excise tax may be uncomfortable for some gun owners because the money supports wildlife restoration, hunter education, and public shooting ranges. But a popular use of the revenue does not cure an unconstitutional tax.
If the federal government imposed a special tax on newspapers to fund public libraries, the worthy destination of the money would not erase the First Amendment violation. The same rule must apply to the Second Amendment.
Moros does not argue that firearms can never be subjected to ordinary taxation. His position is that the government cannot single out a constitutional right for an additional financial burden.
“A right that the government can price out of reach is not a right,” Moros said.
That is the heart of the issue. Legislatures that cannot constitutionally prohibit Americans from buying common firearms should not be permitted to pursue the same objective through discriminatory taxation. The Second Amendment says the right “shall not be infringed.” It does not contain an exception for infringements disguised as taxes.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.
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