Rather than repeal the Second Amendment, liberals make exercising it too expensive

Edmund Kozak:

The war on the Second Amendment is becoming all about cost.

Realizing it’s far easier to make exercising one’s Second Amendment right prohibitively expensive than it is to revoke that right entirely, liberals across America are finding ways to increase the cost of gun ownership.

“This is about … pricing people out of their constitutional right to have a concealed carry permit”

California is the latest state to jack up the cost of freedom beyond the reach of the average American. The California Assembly sent a bill to Gov. Jerry Brown Tuesday which would allow cities and counties to raise the cost of concealed carry permits beyond their current $100 limit.

The bill was introduced by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), who claimed it was merely a way to help local governments balance their budgets. Republican opponents, however, say the move is an obvious attempt to hit the Second Amendment by hitting citizens’ wallets.

“What this is about [is] pricing people out of their constitutional right to have a concealed carry permit,” said Assemblywoman Melissa Melende (R-Lake Elsinore). And indeed, McCarty just so happens to represent the same county of which Scott Jones is sheriff. Jones has been one of the state’s most prolific issuers of concealed carry permits, granting them by the thousands.

“The whole point that I have tried to make in my book, ‘The War On Guns,’ is that there has been a systematic effort to make it more expensive for law-abiding citizens to purchase guns,” said John Lott, director of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

For example, Lott said, “background checks in D.C. cost $125.” Lott noted that this disproportionately affects “poor blacks in high crime urban areas,” who can’t afford to legally purchase the protection they need. “The background check system itself is essentially racist,” he noted.

California and Washington, D.C. are not the only governments to try to make gun ownership too expensive for the common man — and raising concealed carry permit and background check application fees is not the only way to do so. In 2002, New Jersey passed a law which mandated that every firearm in the state must have smart gun technology within three years of the first retail of a smart gun anywhere in the U.S. Recently the state legislature passed a separate law, vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie, which required gun stores to start stocking smart guns.

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