Perhaps President Joe Biden has another reason to push his gun control agenda. According to recent reports, the Biden administration’s push to regulate the popular AR platform of firearms could net the federal government billions of dollars in new tax revenue. At the same time, it could drive the smaller manufacturers out of business.
A newly proposed regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) would treat semi-automatic firearms including the AR-15 much the way machine guns and “destructive devices” are now under the National Firearms Act of 1934. That was in essence the first federal piece of legislation that put any limits on what guns the average citizen could own.
There is a misconception that it “banned” ownership of machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled rifles/shotguns, and destructive devices like rocket launchers, but it actually just highly regulated them. All NFA items are subject to a mandatory transfer fee of $200. In addition, for NFA items would-be buyers need to go through an extensive background check that includes fingerprinting and can take up to a year – and sometimes even longer.
Under the new proposed regulation, which was reported by the Washington Examiner, owners would have to pay the $200 tax per weapon, radically change it (deactivation might be an option) or surrender the gun for destruction. Of course, the ATF doesn’t likely expect that many would actually “give up the guns,” so it could expect to net $200 per each firearm in private hands. Read more…
