On Sunday July, 13, 2008 Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick filed a special appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008.
Within this bill sections 24 – 27 drastically increase certain firearm licenses. Sections 24 & 25 attack lawfully licensed firearm dealers by increasing their license fees from $100 for three years to $250.
Then it adds a $100 inspection fee in years two and three of the license. This tactic would now turn a $100 three year dealer’s license into a $450 three year license.
Section 26 would increase a resident License to Carry fee from $100 for six years to $200 for six years.
Section 27 would increase a non-resident License to Carry fee from $100 for one year to $250 for one year.
“In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, this new proposal from the Governor can only be viewed as an attempt to tax people out of their civil rights,” said Jim Wallace Executive Director of GOAL. “With this new proposal, the Governor continues to demonstrate his willingness to attack lawful gun owners while doing nothing to reduce violent crime. The highest court in the nation has ruled that citizens have an individual right to possess a firearm and now our Governor is trying to tax us out of that right!”
A tax on the First, Fourth or Fifth Amendment would never be considered, nor supported, in the Commonwealth.
Please contact your representatives and ask them to vote against this onerous tax on a Civil Right!
Mitt Romney and his friends spent years telling me that fees weren’t taxes. Are you telling me different?
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p>How is this different than marriage license fees (freedom to marry), pet license fees (property ownership), parade license fees (freedom to assemble), etc., etc.
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p>Freedom isn’t free, right?
this fee is unreasonably high to the point where one may consider it unconstitutional.
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p>Take for instance the fees nearby states charge for a license to carry. A four-year license in new hampshire is 10 bucks. A five-year in Conn. is 35.
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p>But I do your point about freedom not being free. Let’s re-instate poll taxes! Yee-haw!
I have no issue with user fees whatsoever, but there’s an implication that the fee bear SOME relationship to the cost of the service provided. i.e. it costs $150 to record a mortgage. Raise the fee to $375 and my guess is that people would complain that they’re not paying a fee, but rather, a tax.
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p>Similarly with this firearms fee increase.
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p>To get my permit one I had to pay a few bucks for the class, then complete an application with background check.
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p>Most of the work was done by the local police (local police don’t get the fee) with the background check from FBI (FBI doesn’t get the fee) and a facility inspection from ATF (ATF doesn’t get the fee).
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p>There are about 240,000 registered gun owners in Massachusetts. At $250 per, that’s $60,000,000. I’d like to see the argument, to justify the fee, that the State requires $60,000,000 (plus the extras from gun dealers licenses and “inspection” fees) to justify the increase.
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p>So do you recommend, say, that gun registration fees are raised enough to fund all police and judicial resources expended on gun-related crime? I’m okay with that.
I’m sure you’re fine with a gun tax. It’s possibly not a right you seek to enjoy. However, the firearms license is a user fee (wink, wink. Yeah, we know it not, but let’s pretend). It’s a fee that is designated as follows:
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p>Now, if, as is proposed, the “fee” increases and more pours into the general fund, then it’s not a user fee, it’s a tax.
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p>Already, under the current statute from above, that much is clear. Part of it, designated to the General fund, is a tax. At least $50 of the “fee” is already a tax, and now the Governor seeks 250% more taxes.
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p>While we’re at it, let’s tax speech. In order to criticize the government, publish, advertised, post signs, blog, etc…each and every person much pay to the State, the sum of $5.00. Ok with that?
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p>Let’s tax abortions. Want an abortion and freedom of choice, you got it. But, there’s the matter of a $10.00 fee.
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p>And, of course, let’s tax guns. And, let’s pick $250.
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p>The difference between the right to a firearm, speech or an abortion. Nothing. Each is a fundamental right under the constitution.
That’s at least a “difference”.
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p>Supreme Court disagreed.
Is there a fee to speak now? Or for any of the other rights enshrined in the bill of rights?
I’m happy you brought this up. While speech is free, the Constitution was written before the Internet. Consequently, there was long been a posting license required for BMG, and the Editors asked me to collect it this year. So I take this opportunity to remind the BMG community to renew their annual BMG posting license for $10. If you prefer, you can purchase a 3-year license for $25 dollars.
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p>Please send cash or money orders to:
Sabutai get-rich-quick scheme
BMG Posting License Renewal
PO Box 45
Middleborough, MA 02346
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p>You will receive a license and receipt in the mail in 4 to 6 weeks. Post the license near your monitor for legal reasons.
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p>Everything below this line is legalese
( “eef” eht fo tuc %06 a uoy esimorp I ,srotidE )
but truly what other right enshrined in the Constitution carries with it a fee or license? You even get a lawyer for free.
Got to pay planned parenthood, no?
guaranteed by the actual Constitution, and not the deeply rooted traditions implicit in the concept of ordained liberty that are incorporated into the emanations from the penumbras of the Bill of Rights.
What a hoot. Just imagine the angst if the government required a $10 fee and license for an abortion!
If I want to broadcast my speech over the public airwaves, I need a license and subject to fees. Churches, in order to become a legal entity, need to pay incorporation fees. If I post flyers on public property that express my opinions, I’m subject to fines. Essentially, the limit of my free speech is dependent on my financial situation; I’m no Rupert Murdoch who can by news papers and Cable Television channels. The “free lawyer” is paid for by taxes, so unless the person using the court-appointed attorney never paid taxes, that person still pays for the attorney. I’m not saying that these imprecise analogy justifies gun license fees, but gun ownership is not the only right that has out-of-pocket costs associated with it.
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p>The party of “State’s Rights” should have no problem with the right of a state to implement fees on gun ownership. But perhaps high financial burdens imposed by some states on gun ownership does infringe upon people’s 2nd Amendment rights – maybe we should allow for people with lower income to apply for a fee reduction so that state fees never prohibit the ownership of firearms?
to a fee in order to vote? After all, it’s not free for towns, states and the country to hold elections.
The 24th amendment outlaws poll taxes, so poll taxes are not Constitutional. There is no explicit language in the Constitution barring gun license fees or fees tied to free speech so it is not unConstitutional to implement those fees.
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p>The bottom line is that I’m not a big fan of guns, but I’m also not a fan of pricing lower income people out of Constitutional rights. I don’t think guns should be the preview of certain income classes, but I like that certain financial restrictions are in in place that make people think long and hard about owning a gun. $200 bucks isn’t that much and wont prohibit most people who have a desire to own guns legally from owning a gun. I mean, if gun ownership – which is an awesome responsibility – is that important, cut down the cable bill, the liquor bill, the dining out bill, and the gadget bill and you can get $200 bucks.
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p>I’m not in favor of a poll tax and I don’t think that in modern America that gun ownership needs to be as wide spread and accessible as the right to vote. The right to bear arms is in the Constitution, so I hope everyone that wants to take advantage of that right is allowed, with in reason, to do so; but I don’t want people to treat their right to bear arms as haphazardly as some treat their right to vote – in that sense, it makes the right to vote and the right to bear arms dissimilar, in my view.
and local elections. I’m not saying we should, but we could.
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p>I just feel like the fee for the gun licensing, as Gary pointed out, doesn’t really go to stuff that’s gun related, or if it is, it’s not transparent. 60 million bucks? I want to know what Deval plans on using the gun fee for that has nothing to do with guns.
… if you totaled up the labor costs associated with filing police reports for incidents involving firearms, that’d easily add up to $60 million. That’s just off the top of my head.
You’re proposing we fund our public safety via fees?
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p>Coming up next: auto safety fees; being a guy fee (you know for domestic violence); being a woman fee (same); Sox win the World Series fee (a surcharge to all tickets to cover the cost of street riots after the game)….
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p>A fee is an implied fee-for-service, to cover costs gun ownership. If you’re saying divert it to cover public safety then it’s morphed into a tax.
… that its not as hard as you’d think to find $60 million in government spending related to guns. How you want to arrange the funding is another issue.
I’m unaware if Massachusetts SJC has weighed in on the difference between a tax and a fee, but other states have:
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p>(1) a user fee is defrays the costs of a regulatory activity or government service, while a tax is designed to raise general revenue;
(2) a user fee must be proportionate to the necessary costs of the service, whereas a tax may not be.
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p>Quacks like a tax…
the costs associated with unlicensed firearms, which are irrelevant to the cost being covered by the fee/tax.
First, I think the $60 million number is a little high, as gary used the non-resident figure of $250 versus the resident fee of $200. Second, that $200 is for a 6-year license. So even if that $60 million is right, that’s about $10 million per year. Third, for the gun owner, that’s $33.33 a year and hardly prohibitive. So the guy who owns the gun license fee went up from $16 to $33? I guess that means one fewer case of Coors Light or one fewer large 3-topping pizza delivered per year.
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p>I don’t care necessarily where the gun money goes, because that’s $5-10 mil per year that doesn’t have to come from another part of the budget. I’m also in favor of the idea of using fees as a rationing mechanism to persuade people not to own guns because of the cost, but I’d reiterate that I’m in favor of reducing the fees for people who really want to exercise their 2nd amendment right but where prohibited due to the 16 extra bucks per year.
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p>As for the poll tax, it was repealed in 1963. We could reinstitute it, but good luck to anyone who tries.
All throughout the debate of MCCain Feingold, I heard liberals argue that the spending of money is not speech and can therefore be suppressed by government.
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p>Now we hear that spending money is an acceptable “charge” placed on the exercise of the constitutional right? If accepted, this argument concedes that the entirety of campaign finance regulation an unconstitutional abridgment of political speech.
… us through the logic there? I’m not seeing how your conclusion is derived from your premises. What am I missing? Do I have the form of your argument right?:
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p>Premise: “…money is an acceptable “charge” placed on the exercise of the constitutional right”
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p>Premise: “…the spending of money is not speech and can therefore be suppressed by government.”
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p>Conclusion: “…the entirety of campaign finance regulation an unconstitutional abridgment of political speech.” is derived from the permises.
The more obvious distinction is that the cost of media access is not imposed by the government. If the government imposed a speech “fee” (maybe for a license to be in the “protest corral”) it would be more analogous to the firearm tax described above.
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p>I hastily misread the above comment to suggest that cost of media access is somehow an infringement of the commenter’s free speech rights. The commenter did not suggest this.
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p>Mea culpa.
Do tell.
If Stevens and Ginsberg retire, and are replaced with two justices who, say, mirror the jurisprudence of Justices Thomas or Alito, then McCain Feingold is not long for this world.
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p>Conservatives know this, and this is in no small measure why they do not trust McCain. Any justice willing to do the semantic gymnastics necessary to keep McCain Feingold will be willing to live with much of the jurisprudence authored by the liberal justices over the last forty years, rather than overturn it.
Many liberals, e.g. myself and (more notably) Dan Kennedy, were strongly against to McCain-Feingold on the basis that it restricts freedom of speech.
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p>The ACLU also opposes it.
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p>I find the “Conservatives know this” reasoning suspect. Do you have a cite?
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Campaign finance reform has been McCain’s pet issue for quite awhile; the passage of McCain Feingold was a major victory for him.
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p>In the legal challenge to the law, it was substantially weakened by an opinion authored by Roberts and Alito. Indeed, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas wanted to overturn McCain Feingold in its entirety; Roberts and Alito refused only for reasons of judicial minimalism, which doesn’t bode well for the statute in the long run.
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p>Here is McCain telling the Federalist Society how much he loves Roberts and Alito, and would appoint more like them.
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p>I can no longer find the comment thread in which this assertion was broadly disbelieved. The problem is that the judicial philosophy that can accept McCain Feingold is closely correlated with the judicial philosophy that accepts Griswold, Roe, and other similar controversial rulings that get conservatives agitated.
I disagree that they’re similar judicial philosophies. McCain/Feingold restricts freedom. Griswold and Roe remove restrictions. I agree that the latter two bug modern SOCIAL conservatives, but also believe they’re latching on to judicial minimalism is just a flag of convenience.
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p>Again, I see campaign finance reform as party neutral, so would love evidence to the contrary, even if just to satisfy my own morbid curiosity.
In the conservative view, whether policy X enhances freedom or restricts it is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of the constitutional validity of the policy. The Constitution permits the federal government to do only certain specific things, and restricts the federal government from doing certain specific other things, some of which are also restrictions imposed on state governments.
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p>Griswold and Roe have to be discovered in the penumbras and emanations of the Bill of Rights, which is a fancy way of saying they were made up out of whole cloth on policy grounds. In other words, the Constitution restricts government from doing not just certain specific thinsg, but some other things that know one knows about until they are “discovered” by some enterprising law professor. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the specific things that are right there in the paper; rather they have to be found though some process that would confuse Jacques Derrida.
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p>The same “fuzzy math” approach is required to find that a classic and clear infringement on political expression, isn’t.
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p>Thus: Justices Scalia and Thomas have thus far lined up pretty consistently opposed to the penumbras an emanations, and opposed to classic and clear restrictions on political speech, whether in the form of participating in a campaign or burning a flag. I expect Roberts and Alito to line up similarly on both issues, which is why liberals were opposed to their confirmation.
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p>To put it another way, it is very unlikely that a candidate for appointment to the Court is both acceptable to conservatives, and in disagreement with Mitch McConnell on the campaign finance issue.
There’s some significant bipartisan opposition to the Patrick Firearms tax: [State house news service]
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In a lucid moment, Legislators realized that it just wasn’t a good idea to increase the tax on a Constitutional Right:
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