Don Beyer’s gun tax would disarm his constituents in dangerous times

Rep.
Don Beyer
(D-VA)
proposed a 1,000% excise tax on firearms
earlier this month. If passed, the tax would affect the whole nation, but especially his district, which covers the cities of Arlington, Alexandria, and Falls Church, as well as parts of Fairfax County.

As one of Beyer’s constituents, I’m personally concerned by how this tax would leave me and my neighbors defenseless in the face of rising crime rates across the Washington metro region and northern Virginia in particular.

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Northern Virginia news site ALXNOW
reported
earlier this year that “Alexandria’s gun-related crimes increased 100% from 2022 over 2021, according to a police report.” ARLNOW, the site’s sister publication,
reported
an increase in crime from the Arlington Police’s annual report as well. Overall crime increased 17.8%, and while the number of nonviolent offenses, including traffic offenses and drug offenses, decreased, “the rise in the more serious, often violent ‘crimes against persons’ was driven in large part by increases in simple assault and aggravated assault.”

Another
report
by Patch on Alexandria’s most recent publicly available crime numbers noted that even “non-violent” gun crimes are up, “including possession by a felon or carrying without a license.”

This congressional legislation would have a national impact, but by promoting this bill, Beyer ignores the needs of his own constituents.

Under Byer’s legislation, America’s most popular pistol — a Glock 19 with a 15-round magazine — would go up in cost from around $500 to over $5,000 dollars, just for the firearm itself.

The bill also classifies anything with a magazine over 10 rounds as a high-capacity magazine, despite 15 rounds being the most common.

Byer introduced a
version
of this bill last year, and in a
press release
issued last June, he touted the alleged effectiveness of previous radical gun control legislation. Included in these is the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which has, in fact, been proven to have had no impact on violent crime, according to a 2004
study
by the Department of Justice.

Despite Byer’s claims, both anecdotal and literal evidence suggest otherwise.

In Byer’s own district, one of the crimes that increased the most was that of guns used to commit other crimes by people who were already not law-abiding gun owners, either felons in possession or people who obtained a firearm legally but were carrying without a permit.

This supports the idea that more restrictive gun laws only affect law-abiding gun owners. If someone already carries a handgun without a permit or has one illegally, he or she will be unlikely to obtain future firearms through legal means and instead seek to obtain them in ways that avoid paying this proposed excise tax.

Renu Zaretsky, a writer with the Tax Policy Center, affirmed this idea when she
noted
that “gun taxes probably won’t reduce gun violence. But lawmakers keep proposing new or more gun taxes anyway.”

Zaretsky adds that “there remains no convincing evidence that any such tax would reduce criminal acts of violence,” further supporting the idea that only the law-abiding gun owner would be adversely affected by this proposed legislation in northern Virginia and across the rest of the United States.

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This excise tax shouldn’t be supported. With 27 of these United States now having passed constitutional carry, Virginia’s federal, state, and local elected officials should all support their constituents’ rights to purchase protective firearms — or at a minimum, not infringe on these rights as Beyer is attempting to do.

Victoria Snitsar Churchill (
@snits_churchy
) is a journalist and Second Amendment supporter whose advocacy has been covered in a number of news outlets, including 
CBS News
. Keep up with her latest work at 
American Liberty News
.