A new state tax on guns and ammunition could hurt people who want to protect themselves in Colorado, some residents said, with one county official telling Fox News Digital the move is meant to "turn law-abiding gun owners into criminals" and "reduce gun ownership."
Colorado imposed a 6.5% excise tax on gun sales in addition to pre-existing federal taxes, the latest in a slew of gun control measures that have passed this year. Proposition KK, the first such measure to be established through a ballot referendum, garnered 54.4% of votes on Nov. 5.
"The fact that they think that all this crime is caused by guns is ridiculous," El Paso County Commissioner Stan VanderWerf told Fox News Digital. "It's not caused by the guns at all, it's caused by evil intent – these laws turn law-abiding gun owners into criminals. But … the point is to reduce gun ownership. The point is to eliminate points of sale to make it harder to purchase, own and procure a gun.
"If the Democrats in the legislature had their way, they would get rid of guns altogether. Because they know that they're up against the Second Amendment, they're following a lot of processes that the state of California has done – they slowly close things off on the fringes and then slowly close into the middle."
The tax could also hurt small business owners, critics said.
Chris Jandro and Mike Rickert, who have owned Hammer Down Firearms in the far-out Denver suburb of Wheat Ridge since 2012, said they wish that politicians would take a different approach to combating crime. Their store, they said, has seen 34 attempted burglaries since they opened – one successful burglary in 2017 resulted in $200,000 in losses.
"Nobody seems to care about that, but we're going to pass laws to affect law-abiding citizens," Jandro said last week. "Isn't it fascinating? You have to be taxed for a constitutional right!"
Guns are already taxed at 10 to 11% on a federal level. Rickert and Jandro said that, in addition to the federal tax, they must charge an 8% sales tax in the city of Wheat Ridge.
"This bill was intended to kill small gun stores – it creates an effective tax rate of about 25%," Rickert said. "That's a poll tax, a sin tax – you can't exercise your constitutional rights as a gun owner."
The tax will apply to all sales by licensed firearms dealers, manufacturers and ammunition vendors operating within Colorado – but Jandro and Rickert said that the tax will disproportionately impact businesses like theirs.
"[Big sporting goods chains] have a team of lawyers. It's easier to put us out of business, because we don't have the deep pockets that big box stores do," Jandro said.
Expected to generate $39 million annually, the funds will be directed toward mental health and public safety initiatives throughout the state – particularly toward services for victims of domestic violence, according to the bill.
Majority leader and state Rep. Monica Duran – a Democrat, major advocate of the bill, and Wheat Ridge resident – said that Coloradans had "made the right choice to step up and help fill funding gaps in crime victim services" by voting for Prop KK.
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"Without the support from crime victim services as a young single mother trapped in an abusive relationship, there is no way I’d be here today celebrating the passage of Prop KK," Duran wrote in a statement. "From navigating the challenging judicial system to helping secure child care, crime victim services play a major role in uplifting survivors by providing them the resources they need to start anew. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your support of Prop KK."
"If you were a domestic violence victim, you think you would want some protection," Jandro said. "We get a lot of women – because there's a restraining order, because of their ex, because they want to be protected. Now these women can't protect themselves from domestic violence, because [Colorado State Representative] Monica Duran thinks they're safer without a gun."
VanderWerf called the suite of gun control laws "insensitive to public safety," saying that additional fines and hoops to jump through will inordinately affect "people that don't have a lot of resources and feel like they need a firearm to provide for their own personal protection," especially victims of domestic abuse.
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"This applies to women who may need to overpower someone more powerful than them," he said. "A woman who might be a single parent, trying to raise two kids – do they have time to take all these courses? To do all this kind of work? To pay all this money in order to carry a firearm? No, it's difficult to them.
"It's like saying if someone robs a bank, the state government will produce an excise tax that will force the other account owners in the bank to pay for the losses. The real way to solve these problems is to deal with mental health correctly, not to treat it as an artifact of something about guns."
Duran could not be reached for comment at press time.
Proposition KK is the latest in a suite of anti-gun legislation that has passed through the state. Last year, a three-day waiting period was imposed on all gun purchases in the state.
Another Colorado Senate bill passed this year, 24-066, requires credit card companies to give firearm purchases a specific merchant category code to make those purchases easier to track and tip off law enforcement when an alarming number of gun purchases are made.
Gun sellers are now required to get state permits on top of their federal permits through the ATF, and undergo training through the state under SB 24-1353.
As of this year, gun owners also must lock their firearms in a container when leaving them inside their locked car, under SB 24-1348; another bill requires concealed carry permit holders to undergo an eight-hour training course, rather than a three-hour course, and refresh that training every five years.
