How does the right to vote compare to right to bear arms?

[srican69]

One has to be free ( no poll tax) ... so by extension - does the other have to be affordable?

Can congress use its taxing authority to the tax the bejeezus out of 'dangerous' firearms ? - however it may choose to define 'dangerous'.

or will such a move seen as being an infringement of that right?

[Recursion]

1. Well, voting for the wrong person can kill a lot more people than a gun

See Bush, George W.

There's currently an excise tax on firearms (10% I think? It funds wetlands conservation or something like that). We could increase it.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Go & try to buy a machine gun. Or even a really short

sawed-off shotgun.

The Feds passed laws requiring taxes & permits for those things in the 30's to keep the out of the hands of the public (& gangsters).

The precedent is already there.

[valerief]

3. $5000 a bullet!!!! nt

[srican69]

7. I will be thrilled to see $1 a bullet ..you can get one for 17 cents now.

more over - taxing it insanely will only create a blackmarket for bullets.

[cali]

4. it doesn't.

[hack89]

5. If the intent is to limit the exercise of a civil liberty

then it is unconstitutional. Settled law.

[srican69]

9. you seem to know what you are talking about..

your answer seems to suggest that such a tax will not hold. Am I correct?

[hack89]

13. It would not hold

it is no different then a poll tax - and they were deem unconstitutional decades ago.

[srican69]

15. thanks - that answers my question.

I bet a lot of us in DU don't know this and other complexities in enacting a gun control law.

[jody]

14. And RKBA is a civil right. nt

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. There was no Right to vote in the Constitution as originally ratified. n/t

[jody]

8. Are you sure there is a "right" to vote? nt

[libdem4life]

10. I have a thought that we make a compromise...Department of the Right to Bear Arms

Keep, tax, register, renew, train, license, penalize appropriately, all legal guns and make every gun owner legally and financially responsible for his/her guns and any actions committed using them, unless proven they were stolen. Even as tobacco or alcohol or medications or other subtances are locked up from children, require classes and approved devices for specific and observable security for guns in the home. Turn in illegal guns or face a very stiff penalty ...and revocation of rights for a period of time...if caught or captured. Make up a list of those that are now illegal and allow a tax deduction of full value as it turned over to military agencies...no questions asked...no penalty. Pretty sure they have the appropriate situations these weapons are manufactured for in our many War Theaters around the world.

I have come to the personal and political conclusion that we can't get rid of guns, no matter how badly some might like to. Not going to happen.

But we did start up the TSA on a dime called 9-11 and have to practically strip to go on a plane, and remember not to wear an underwire bra in order not to be groped, due to a goofy shoe bomber.

FEMA, also. We love to hate them until we need them.

Ask a town in Connecticut if they support this? Hopefully, a nation will figure it out.

[msongs]

11. no militia requirement to vote nt

[srican69]

12. well, Scalia et al, seem to think not much of it. Militia, people ..... these are just words...that

mean the same thing.

[X_Digger]

16. Taxing something to burden the expression of a right? Would be an unconstitutional infringement..

There were poll taxes, as you mention, but there are other cases, including this one with the first amendment..

Minneapolis Star Tribune Company v. Commissioner

Differential treatment of the press, then, places such a burden on the interests protected by the First Amendment that such treatment cannot be countenanced unless the State asserts a counterbalancing interest of compelling importance that it cannot achieve without differential taxation.
...
By creating this special use tax, which, to our knowledge, is without parallel in the State's tax scheme, Minnesota has singled out the press for special treatment. We then must determine whether the First Amendment permits such special taxation. A tax that burdens rights protected by the First Amendment cannot stand unless the burden is necessary to achieve an overriding governmental interest.
...
When the State singles out the press, though, the political constraints that prevent a legislature from passing crippling taxes of general applicability are weakened, and the threat of burdensome taxes becomes acute. That threat can operate as effectively as a censor to check critical comment by the press, undercutting the basic assumption of our political system that the press will often serve as an important restraint on government.
...
Further, differential treatment, unless justified by some special characteristic of the press, suggests that the goal of the regulation is not unrelated to suppression of expression, and such a goal is presumptively unconstitutional.

Not to mention 18 USC § 242

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, .. shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year,....