Economic warfare is a quintessential facet of any war campaign — think tariffs, or the crippling sanctions imposed against unfriendly regimes like Iran, China, and North Korea by President Trump during his tenure — and the American political class know it, and they use it.

But against whom?  Well, their enemy, obviously, which is we!

See the excerpt below from a Fox News piece out yesterday:

More than two dozen House Democrats put forward legislation Friday that would slap 'assault weapons' and high-capacity magazines with a 1,000% excise tax, a change that would raise the price of a $500 weapon to $5,000 in a bid to reduce access to guns across the country.

(An excise tax is one levied at the point of manufacture, and then reflected at the point of sale.)

Congressman Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, introduced the same idea last year, and as Fox also noted:

The text of Beyer's new bill was not out as of the weekend, and it was unclear if any changes were made from his 2022 version.

If the text does remain unchanged, the 1,000% tax would apply to every "semiautomatic assault weapon" with a fixed magazine that holds 10 or more rounds.  As seen above, a $500 firearm would now cost $5,000, and a $2,000 firearm would ring in at $20,000.  (And this would all be before any local taxes or fees.)  Clearly, if you're a regular American, these prices would be prohibitive and nullify your ability to purchase a firearm.

Per Fox News, Beyer argued the aim of the proposal was to "curb the epidemic of gun violence."  The outlet also reported that according to Beyer:

'Congress must take action to stem the flood of weapons of war into American communities, which have taken a terrible toll in Uvalde, Buffalo, Tulsa and too many other places,' Beyer said then. 'Again and again assault weapons designed for use on the battlefield have been used in mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, hospitals, churches, synagogues, malls, theaters, bars and so on.'

Note what Beyer didn't say.  He didn't argue that the federal government needs to raise revenue to cover Social Security or socialized medicine programs, and he didn't claim that the taxation is necessary to support "climate change" initiatives.  He knows that very few Americans would even be able to fork over $5,000–$20,000 for a firearm — we can still barely afford to feed our families thanks to what they've done to the dollar — so he must not expect that many people would actually wind up paying this tax.

What Beyer did say, though?  The suggested tax is a way to "stem the flood of weapons of war into American communities."  It's a roundabout way to disarm the American populace without attacking the Second Amendment at all.

It's a punishment levied against the regular American who chooses to exercise his right to self-defense.

Another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee, signer of the Declaration of Independence and ancestor of the great General Robert E. Lee, is certainly a better gauge by which to measure patriotism, and how a Virginia man ought to be.  Lee had a lot to say about firearm ownership, including this poignant sentence:

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.

Image: Henry Hudson Kitson, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.