California Law Will Raise Taxes on Firearms and Ammunition to Pay for School Security and ‘Violence Prevention Programs’
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law doubling tax on firearms and ammunition to generate revenue for public school security and “violence prevention” initiatives.
AB 28, the Gun Violence Prevention and School Safety Act, will impose an 11% tax on guns and ammunition, on top of the 10% or 11% federal tax — depending on the firearm being purchased. The law allocates funds accrued through the new tax to “various gun violence prevention, education, research, response, and investigation programs.”
“While radical judges continue to strip away our ability to keep people safe, California will keep fighting — because gun safety laws work,” Governor Newsom said in a press release. “The data proves they save lives: California’s gun death rate is 43% lower than the rest of the nation. These new laws will make our communities and families safer.”
Several statistics on gun violence have been criticized in recent years for painting with too broad a brush, including suicide-related gun deaths, self-defense gun deaths, accidental gun deaths, and even law-enforcement-related gun deaths within one all-encompassing “gun violence” statistic. When raw data on homicides alone is reviewed, it is evident that California still has a major violent crime crisis on its hands. In 2021, the state saw more homicides than anywhere else in the nation.
The bill text notes that “nationwide, the parents of a Black son 13 to 19 years of age were more likely to lose their child to gun homicide than every other cause of death combined.” Legislators did not however address the impact the excess tax will have on low income families living in high crime areas and seek to own a firearm for self-defense. By the bill’s own statistics, minorities living in low income communities are more likely to be affected by gun violence, and therefore should be given greater access to self-defense measures. The imposed tax will instead create a larger wealth-gap between who can afford to own firearms for protection and who cannot.
Governor Newsom also signed SB 2, restricting lawful gun owners ability to conceal carry a firearm in nearly all public places. He also signed AB 455 which aims to keep firearms “out of the hands of potentially dangerous individuals.”
