“Taxing the right to keep and bear arms out of existence is tantamount to abrogating the Second Amendment. ... you can no more do that constitutionally”
Except we do have well-established precedent.
NFA laws tax the right to keep and bear arms of distinctly military value practically out of existence. For 82 years, a $200 tax plus registration has severely abrogated the 2nd Amendment, starting out as a stifling ~400% tax (and thru inflation, only recently has the NFA market expanded having brought the tax down to a relatively palatable ~25%), with severe fines for non-payment and paperwork errors. Extending this to non-military arms should be a no-brainer for a skilled Constitutional lawyer bent on bending the Constitution to the Left’s will. Seems the only reason we _haven’t_ seen NFA restrictions extended to all firearms is (A) the likely severe backlash, and (B) it would spark a SCOTUS review that would likely overturn NFA.
_Miller_ has upheld such infringement for a very long time (riddled with flaws, yes, but upheld nonetheless).
_Heller_ established that licensing is tolerable, so long as no arbitrary denial of application & payment - which NFA matches (you’ll get permission, just might take a pile of paperwork, money, and time).
We desperately need a serious assault on the validity of NFA law ... lest NFA law be used to seriously assault us.
We also have a precedent against any such onerous tax. One of the Jim Crow provisions was a poll tax that many people could not afford to pay, almost exclusively black people. The argument was that any tax that burdensome was a de facto denial of the rights protected under the Constitution, and was therefore invalid.