- At least one House Democrat favors an aggressive tax on AR-15 style weapons to prevent mass shootings.
- It's not the first time that Democrats eyed a tax as a method of curbing gun violence.
- Others who favored such taxes in the past include Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Rep. Donald Beyer of Virginia, a member of the tax-focused House Ways and Means Committee, has put forward a plan to levy a 1,000% excise tax on manufacturers, importers, and producers of AR-15 style weapons that's designed to pass Congress with only Democratic votes.
It's not the first time that type of plan has been proposed to reduce gun violence, though this one is meant to severely restrict access to semi-automatic weapons and prevent mass shootings. Other Democrats have previously pushed new gun taxes to reduce gun deaths overall.
In 2019 and 2020, two Democrats introduced similar measures to raise gun taxes, though not at the enormous scale Beyer wants.
Both Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts put forward plans to triple the existing tax on handguns to 30% and nearly quintuple the current tax rate on shells and cartridges to 50%. It came on the heels of deadly mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
"Increasing taxes on gun manufacturers will reduce gun and ammunition sales and bring in new federal revenue that we can use for both gun violence prevention and enforcement of existing gun laws," Warren wrote on Twitter at the time. "Together, we can hold gun manufacturers accountable."
It reflected a strong desire within the party to address gun violence after earlier efforts to tackle it went nowhere in Congress. The measures failed to break the stalemate around gun violence with Republicans staunchly opposed to them. Warren has signaled interest in the Beyer plan.
There is one big difference between the Warren and Beyer plan. Warren's proposal was part of a multi-pronged effort to decrease overall shooting deaths by 80% and not curb mass shootings in particular. The Beyer measure is focused on specifically restricting access to AR-15-style weapons, the kind used by gunmen in a string of high-profile shootings in New York, Texas, and Oklahoma recently.
Other Democrats previously pushed hefty tax increases on guns and ammunition to make them unaffordable. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York said in 1993 that he wanted to tax handgun ammunition "out of existence" to curb crime, The New York Times reported.
He called for a 10,000% tax on ammunition, though he would have exempted bullets used for target shooting and hunting.
Congress may be on the verge of a breakthrough after many years of GOP resistance to tackling gun violence. A bipartisan group of senators announced a tentative deal on a slim package of gun safety measures on Sunday that would channel new federal money into mental health initiatives and strengthening school security. It includes ten Senate Republicans — the amount of support needed to cross the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate.
It would also establish federal grants for states to implement so-called "red flag laws" allowing authorities to briefly seize weapons from individuals who are a threat to themselves or others under court orders. But it falls far short of what many Democrats wanted, like an outright ban on semi-automatic AR-15-style weapons.