America’s three largest gun rights groups have joined together as plaintiffs in a suit against Seattle’s new gun tax.
The National Rifle Association, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation all believe that Seattle’s $25 tax on the sale of every firearm and two to five cent tax on the sale of every round of ammunition within city limits is both unconstitutional and in violation of Washington state law.
"The Seattle City Council is breaking the law, plain and simple," said Lars Dalseide, a spokesman for the NRA. "The power to regulate firearms rests in the state legislature and not in the individual municipalities. The courts said as much when Seattle tried to institute a ban a few years ago."
The city said the tax, which passed on Aug. 10 and will go into effect on Jan. 1, was designed to offset the cost of gun violence and not to restrict gun rights. "We’re not attempting to control whether someone can purchase a weapon," Tim Burgess, the president of Seattle’s city council, told CNN. "We are taxing a commodity."
Burgess did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Free Beacon.
The city council expects the tax to generate between $300,000 and $500,000 in revenue, but gun groups have disputed that number since, they argue, many gun buyers will simply make their purchases outside city limits. The potential added cost of selling and buying firearms in the city is one of the reasons why Outdoor Emporium and Precise Shooter, two Seattle gun shops, in addition to two local gun owners, are involved in the lawsuit.
The backlash against the gun tax mirrors the 2009 legal action that resulted after Seattle tried to ban firearms in city parks and city-owned community centers. That law was struck down after Washington’s state supreme court affirmed that the city could not pre-empt the state legislature’s ability to regulate firearms. That case featured the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation as plaintiffs.
Dalseide said that while the NRA believes the gun tax violates state law, it is the tax’s infringement on the Second Amendment that prompted the partnership between the three groups.
"This tax infringes upon a basic constitutional right and that’s why the largest pro-Second Amendment group has teamed up with the leading firearm industry trade association and the Seattle-based Second Amendment Foundation to fight this injustice," he said.
Spokesmen for the other two groups reiterated this point.
"There have been cases where one or more of the organizations has joined another suit later in an amicus brief, a friend of the court filing, to make a particular point," said Mike Bazinet, who handles public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. "But what Seattle did was so egregious."
Bazinet said the Seattle law presented a situation in which each group had an obvious reason to join the suit. "So this was a case where it was so clear," he said. "The Second Amendment Foundation has real strength on the ground being based out there and having an excellent legal team that’s worked for them in the past. This was a really good case to jump in and, I think, to show the united front that the firearms industry and the Second Amendment groups have when a case is as serious as this."
Since the Second Amendment Foundation is based in Washington and had been involved in the 2009 case against Seattle’s ban on guns in city parks, the group already had a local law firm and plaintiffs ready to file suit. Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said that his organization had previously joined with the NRA in suits against Seattle, New Orleans, and San Francisco.
"In the past the NRA has been on the lawsuit with the Second Amendment Foundation in New Orleans," Gottlieb said. "We stopped their gun confiscation and ordered the guns returned that were confiscated during hurricane Katrina. We also sued on the Seattle parks ban. The NRA joined with SAF on that. The NRA also joined with the Second Amendment Foundation in suing San Francisco over their handgun ban."