John Stoehr: Time is right to talk gun tax

The headquarters of Sturm Ruger & Co. at 1 Lacey Place in Fairfield. The headquarters of Sturm Ruger & Co. at 1 Lacey Place in Fairfield. Photo: Alexander Soule / Hearst Connecticut Media Buy photo Photo: Alexander Soule / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close John Stoehr: Time is right to talk gun tax 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Now’s a good time to start thinking about a gun tax.

To be clear, nothing will happen. Not soon. The governor and the General Assembly do not have a budget even after weeks of negotiation, and if they don’t have one by September, there will be hell to pay. Given everyone’s attention is on the budget, or on vacationing when they should be working, the odds of lawmakers in Hartford talking about a gun tax are approximately zero.

But there are three reasons why right now is a good time for the rest of us to be thinking about a gun tax.

One, a gun tax would raise revenue for the state. Two, a gun tax would almost certainly have no impact on gun sales. Three, no one is paying attention to gun sales because of the current president of the United States. In terms of policy and (current) politics, this is close to a no-brainer.

For argument’s sake, let’s examine salient facts as they pertain to the nation’s largest gun manufacturer, Southport’s Sturm Ruger.

In September, before the election, when nearly everyone believed then-candidate Donald Trump could not beat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, gun sales were through the roof. Indeed, they set records, according to CNN. Sturm Ruger reported sales up nearly 20 percent (Ruger’s rival, Smith & Wesson, saw sales jump by 40 percent). The FBI said background checks increased by 6 percent between August 2015 and August 2016. Bear in mind this data comes from licensed firearms dealers in the formal economy.

By November, guns were flying off shelves. Ruger’s sales rose to 21 percent. Was it because the deer hunting season was getting underway? Nope, according to Ruger’s current CEO

Christopher Killoy, back when he was COO.

He told Fox Business in November, “We kept waiting for the hunting season to kick in, and really the hunting season this year was fairly weak across the board.”

Killoy’s ex-boss, Michael Fifer, suggested rising sales were rooted in politics. “If you look back at what happened eight years ago, there was in my opinion a surprising number of people who were actually surprised by the outcome at the last minute, and then scrambled through November to try and get any product.” Translation: Some doubted Barack Obama could win in 2008, and they weren’t going to make that same mistake in 2016. Their thinking was “buy, buy, buy!”

Then it stopped.

Donald Trump won.

Background checks dropped 7 percent. Ruger’s sales fell more than 20 percent. Profits declined by nearly 60 percent. Again, the reason was politics. According to Hearst Connecticut Media, Killoy told investors, “Rhetoric likely triggered a run last year on new models by gun enthusiasts on fears of bans or additional red tape, who might otherwise have waited to this year to make a purchase.”

So with guns sales down, a Republican in charge, and the NRA trying to figure out what to do with itself now that it no longer had its favorite boogie man in the White House, time for a gun tax.

Before we do, consider this. Taxation is entirely legitimate. The government has the right. It is not an infringement on the Second Amendment.

Back in 1989, the commissioner of the state Department of Revenue Services felt the need to clarify that Connecticut General Statutes define selling to mean “the transfer of title, exchange or barter of tangible personal property.” Since guns are clearly property, said then-

Commissioner Timothy Bannon, “the sales of firearms are subject to the sales tax.” Because they are, taxing firearms is not the same as taxing a God-given right.

Bannon added, with a little attitude, that “nothing in the United States or Connecticut Constitution ... precludes taxation of firearms for sales tax purposes. Nothing in taxing firearms, in any way, infringes upon an individual’s constitutional right to bear arms.”

As if to underscore the point, the Washington Supreme Court affirmed the government’s right to tax guns and ammunition in a ruling this month. Interestingly, it wasn’t a state tax that the NRA opposed. It was a municipal tax of $25 per gun and 2 to 5 percent on ammunition, according to a Seattle law passed in 2015.

The other argument against taxing guns would be endangering the livelihoods of state residents who work at Ruger. That is indeed a compelling counter-argument until you remember Ruger’s sales were setting records when everyone thought Hillary Clinton was going to be president, and even after Connecticut enacted the nation’s strictest gun laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings.

A tax on guns is not going to hurt Ruger.

If you want proof, wait for the next Democratic president.

John Stoehr is a fellow of the Yale Journalism Initiative.