Gun Rights and the 2020 Election

 

Introduction:

Every time I think that the craziness of 2020 is chilling out a bit, something new happens that just ramps things up to a new high. With the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the stakes of the 2020 election are even higher than before. A spot on the supreme court can have long lasting implications far beyond the next presidential term. This means that the future of controversial topics, such as the second amendment, are very uncertain right now. Leading up to RBG's death, I was fairly confident in the state of the 2nd Amendment. With a new voter bloc of gun owners coming in the wake of the national unrest, I thought that gun owners could feel secure in that politicians were not going to make further moves on the 2nd Amendment.

This is not the case any more. Without a pro-gun conservative in the court replacing RBG, we don't know which way the court is going to lean the next time a gun-related issue comes up. New methods of restricting gun owners are already being discussed by left-leaning circles. The first case after RBG's replacement will have to be the litmus test for how the new justice will lean on other conservative issues. 

Details:

So what is going to happen? What sorts of things are going to be done to impede on the 2nd amendment after the election? The answer is simple. Anti-gun politicians have realized that a full-on national "assault weapon" ban is not nearly popular enough to pass and be enforced. So politicians are moving to a divide-and-conquer approach, pushing state and local governments to pass legislation on a smaller scale that then trickles up to national politics. 

One of the policies I've seen floated has been heightened taxes on ammunition. The goal for this would be to tax ammo at a rate that creates what is called a prohibitive tax. A prohibitive tax is one that actively discourages consumers from buying a product. Although ammo prices as they are today are already insane, a prohibitive tax would likely make prices like this the norm. A tax like this would have an extremely disproportionate effect on middle and low income communities, who have just as much of a right to self defense as people with money to burn. This has been a trend in firearms regulation going all the way back to when the National Firearms Act was first passed. Originally, the $200 tax stamp that was required to register a machine gun or short barreled rifle was intended to be a prohibitive tax. $200 in that 1930's was a massive amount of money. Although the $200 is not a massive amount in today's money, the government has a history of keeping certain firearms and components out of citizens' hands by attacking their wallets.

The second policy I've seen that I fear could gather traction involves magazines. A ban on standard and high capacity magazines would be fairly easy for states and localities to introduce. While states and the country in general have trouble pushing for a ban on assault rifles, they are much more able to push the argument that, because 30 round magazines are not guns themselves, they are not protected under the 2nd Amendment. Just because a magazine is required for a gun to function, the argument would be that 5 or 10 rounds are sufficient for a lawful use. This is obviously flawed given the context of the 2nd Amendment. Anti-gun politicians often argue how many rounds are needed for hunting, as if people own AK74s and AR15s to hunt with. The 2nd amendment has always been about providing personal accountability for the safety of yourself, your family, and you community, not against deer, but against people seeking to do you harm. 

Conclusion:

Although it was a shorter blog today, I felt that it was important to point out a few things regarding the election. I know that personally, I got a bit comfortable with the political standing of gun rights in the short term. I was glad that so many people had gone out and become gun owners for the purposes of self-defense, and was hopeful that regulations would either begin rolling back, or at the very least stay steady. 

Now, I'm not so sure. We don't know who this new supreme court nominee is going to be, and if they are anything like Trump politically, it makes me nervous as to how well the 2nd amendment will be protected. More gun-related legislation has gone on under the Trump administration than under Obama, so I am not going to take my gun rights for granted under whoever Trump's pick is.