H R 127 - It's far worse than it looks at first glance. Absurdly so, in fact. [View all]

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/127/text

Someone in another thread has already described this bill as an $800 poll tax.

It's almost indescribably more draconian than that.

Let's use as an example someone who wishes to own a single firearm, a .22 rifle. They buy it at age 25 and keep it for 40 years.

Our gun owner needs to get a General License. This entails passing a Brady background check. No federal fee, but almost all dealers charge for it. My local gun shop charges $45. We'll just round it to $50 because of increased demand. Next, a psychological evaluation. A quick bit of Googling states that the cost for this would be at least $600 (please correct me if that's wrong). I very much doubt anyone but the potential licensee will be on the hook for this. Next, 24 hours of training. This is speculative, but I'm going to say $20 an hour per person for large groups, so that's $480. Finally, you need a firearms insurance policy, specified to be $800.

Total cost of your gun license: $1,930.

But wait! There's more! The license has to be renewed every year for the first 5 years, and every 3 years after that. Our hypothetical gun owner will need to renew his license 15 times. So how much does a renewal cost? There's another Brady check ($50), another psych evaluation ($600), and 8 hours of training ($200). Each renewal will cost $850. Multiplied by 15, that's $12,750 over the course of the next 39 years.

Still more costs! The mandatory insurance policy is only good for one year, and has to be renewed annually for the same price ($800). 39 more annual policies will cost $31,200.

That means the total cost of owning a single firearm for one's lifetime, aside from the now trivial cost of the firearm itself, would under this bill be $45,880. And if the firearm in question is a "military-style" weapon, it will cost tens of thousands of dollars more over time due to increased training costs. Per gun.

Telling gun owners they're going to have to pay in the neighborhood of fifty grand just to own a bolt action .22 or a double barreled shotgun is not a recipe for increasing one's share of the vote.