Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) has unveiled a bill that, if picked up by Democrat leaders, would place a 1,000 percent tax on certain types of firearms and would be immune to GOP filibuster in the Senate.
Beyer’s bill comes in the wake of a deadly shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two adults dead. The shooting re-energized efforts among liberals to pass wide-ranging restrictions on purchasing and possessing several types of firearms.
That bill, among other provisions, would ban the sale of “any semiautomatic centerfire rifle or semi-automatic centerfire shotgun that has, or has the capacity to accept, an ammunition feeding device with a capacity exceeding 5 rounds” to citizens below the age of 21; currently one only needs to be 18 to buy such a weapon.
It would also codify the Department of Justice’s controversial ban on bump stocks, a weapon modification that increases the fire rate of a semiautomatic firearm.
In addition, it would also make it a federal crime to possess weapons that critics have pejoratively labeled “ghost guns,” usually describing homemade or 3D-printed weapons without a serial number.
However that bill, like most bills Democrats could put forward, is likely to founder in the Senate, where all legislation must overcome a 60-vote filibuster threshold before it can go to the floor for a simple majority vote.
Beyer’s bill, which would place a 1,000 percent excise tax on the sale of several semi-automatic weapons, is designed to bypass the filibuster threshold completely.
While the bill would not place an outright ban on weapons targeted by Democrats, the tax could make them unaffordable for average Americans.
Currently, AR-15s—the weapon most targeted by Democrats—range in price from $400 on the low end to $2000 on the high end. If Beyer’s bill were passed by the Senate, it would increase the cost to $4,000 on the low end all the way up to $20,000 or more.
To do so, the bill uses the budget reconciliation process.
The budget reconciliation process allows bills specifically related to federal revenues and expenditures to pass through the Senate by a simple majority vote, with no need for the bill to overcome the filibuster threshold.
Democrats have already relied on the process on various occasions to overcome GOP resistance in the upper chamber.
At the beginning of 2021, the process was used to advance the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to President Joe Biden’s desk. Later, Democrats used the process for the Build Back Better Act, which ultimately failed after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) refused to vote for the package.
However, this process too is subject to some limitations.
Because of the potential for abuse of the system, as indeed happened through the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan and the Democrat-controlled House, the late-Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) authored a rule requiring all items in a budget reconciliation bill to be directly related to federal revenues and expenditures.
The parliamentarian, who serves as the Senate’s nonpartisan referee, has wide-reaching authority to accept or reject items in budget reconciliation that go beyond the bounds of this rule.
This was a power that the current parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, exercised on several occasions during negotiations surrounding immigration provisions in the Build Back Better Act.
Though Beyer’s bill seems to be within the bounds of the reconciliation process, Republicans could try to convince MacDonough against the bill if it comes to the Senate.
Thus far, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrat leaders have given no indication that the bill will be considered, however.
