Listen to “Spike in guns and ammo sales amid pandemic || 1370 WSPD Toledo || 8/10/20” on Spreaker.
[This exchange begins at the 8:36 mark of the audio file at the link above.]
Q: Emily, one of the concerns I’ve got over President Trump’s executive orders issued over the weekend affecting the payroll tax, if that’s upheld, if that survived lawsuits. I did find some sections of the US code that makes this legal for the President to order.
Unfortunately, I also think it sets a bad precedent where a new President who may not be as friendly towards the Second Amendment as Donald Trump has proven to be could come in and order an executive order increasing taxes on ammunition or gun sales. And just the same way, have the same effect, without having to go through Congress.
A: Yeah, that is really scary. Now the good news is the Supreme Court, although they have been really unwilling to take up new Second Amendment issues, even in our new composition of the Court, our most recent new composition which we sure thought they would be far more likely to take up Second Amendment cases. Now, even though they’ve not been as friendly as we thought, they are and remain likely to take up issues of executive authority.
So that is good news and we can only hope that if a new President oversteps bounds, tries to tax firearm manufacturers out of business and tax Americans out of their Second Amendment rights, that that is something the Supreme Court would take up and hopefully put the kibosh on pretty quickly.
– Attorney Emily Taylor in Spike in guns and ammo sales amid pandemic