Politico: "Using sales taxes as a gun control tool"

I recently made the same argument in an op-ed for Fox News.  These taxes are just a way to reduce gun ownership.

State and local officials are pushing a new way to expand gun control: taxes. 

Gun owners in and around Chicago last week started paying a new $25 tax on every firearm they purchase. In California, a statehouse panel on April 15 will hear testimony on a nickel-per-bullet tax measure, and in New Jersey, lawmakers want to slap an additional 5 percent sales tax on guns and ammo. 

The effort to impose new taxes on guns and bullets faces serious opposition from pro-gun groups, but it shows how far some states and localities are willing to go in this new frontier on gun control — especially as Washington struggles to find consensus even on the most scaled-back gun proposals being debated in Congress. . . .  

Gun Owners of America legislative counsel Michael Hammond called gun taxes “an effort to say the poor can’t own firearms because we’re going to impose a tax which they can’t afford to pay.” . . .