A few week in the past, we reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is proposing a tax vacation for buying firearms, ammunition and equipment. Dubbed “Second Modification Summer season,” DeSantis’s initiative would eradicate taxes on these merchandise from Memorial Day to the Fourth of July.
Now, pro-gun lawmakers in neighboring Georgia are working towards an identical tax vacation of their very own. Earlier this week, Republicans within the Georgia Senate handed a measure that may waive the gross sales tax on firearms purchases for 11 days starting on the second Friday of October.
In accordance with a report at savannahnow.com, Senate Invoice 47 handed by a 31-to-21 margin alongside celebration strains. Whereas Republicans mentioned the invoice was about bolstering gun rights and the Second Modification, Democrats tried to make the measure in regards to the Sept. 4, 2024, Apalachee Excessive College murders of two academics and two college students.
One such was Democrat Sen. Nan Orrock of Atlanta.
“Are you all tone deaf?” Orrock requested. “It’s like taking a knife and sticking it into the guts of a mum or dad who has misplaced a toddler. What is that this blood lust for weapons?”
Truly, it’s nothing like what Orrock mentioned. Implementing a gun tax vacation has nothing to do with a troubled younger particular person killing fellow college students and academics. Anybody shopping for a gun through the vacation would nonetheless have to move a background verify, similar to at another time. Consequently, anybody benefiting from the tax vacation can be a verified law-abiding citizen.
It’s incomprehensible how Orrock and different anti-gun Democrats can equate a mass assassin taking pictures youngsters and academics at a college with a chicken hunter shopping for a brand new shotgun or a single mother buying a handgun for self-defense. The conditions are so vastly totally different from each other that the comparability is absurd.
Concerning the so-called “blood lust for weapons,” Orrock clearly both misunderstands or chooses to miss the Second Modification to the U.S. Structure. The Supreme Court docket has persistently dominated that the Second Modification protects a person proper to maintain and bear arms. The Court docket has additionally established that the act of buying firearms is protected beneath the Second Modification.
This invoice and the Florida proposal contradict the actions of anti-gun states which have begun proposing and enacting extra excise taxes on weapons and ammunition—a kind of “sin tax,” though exercising your Second Modification rights is just not a sin. In recent times, each California (11%) and Colorado (6.5%) have imposed new taxes on weapons and ammo.
It’s too early to find out if states proposing a gun gross sales tax vacation have gotten a development, however Florida and Georgia’s initiatives definitely signify a constructive growth. It will likely be fascinating to see if different states comply with swimsuit throughout this session.
Apparently, the Georgia Senate handed an identical invoice final yr that proposed a five-day tax vacation, however the GOP-led state Home of Representatives didn’t act on the measure.
