Republican politicians in the U.S. can be a difficult bunch to nail down. Some of them are clearly serious about advocating for the issues and policy positions that their constituents want: gun rights, liberty, freedom from oppressive government and from leftist agendas being forced on them.
Other Republicans, though, talk during election season as if they care about those issues and, then, once in office, vote as if they are centrist Democrats.
It’s been infuriating to see over the years.
But, on occasion, Republicans do still try to do the right thing in Congress, and if a recent bill gets to a vote, this will be one of those occasions. Bill Pan writes,
Some Republican members of Congress have launched a legislative effort to repeal a federal tax on certain firearms that has been in place for almost a century.
The tax was first imposed in 1934 as the central piece of the National Firearms Act (NFA), an attempt by Congress to limit the availability of machine guns, short-barreled shotguns, short-barreled rifles, silencers and suppressors, and other weapons and accessories that were widely used within criminal organizations during Prohibition.
In addition to background checks and registration, Americans must pay a $200 tax each time they transfer an NFA-regulated item. Further, manufacturers and importers are taxed $1,000 each year and dealers are taxed $500 in order to do business with NFA-regulated weapons.
A bill introduced Wednesday would abolish the $200 federal tax on gun buyers. Its leading sponsor, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), said law-abiding citizens should not be subject to unnecessary taxes to exercise their constitutional right to arm themselves.
Now, I’ll be the first to say that this isn’t enough, by far, in removing Federal gun control laws. But it is a start and a welcome effort to move things in the right direction.
So, I’ll take this for what it is: If passed, it’s an incremental move in the direction that I want (which is absolutely no gun control). I can work with that. After all, incremental changes are exactly how leftists have been able to get gun control implemented in some many places.
I’ll take incremental moves in the right direction, any day of the week, over no moves at all.