A new law is set to take effect in California on July 1st. This new law comes from a bill passed in 2023, AB28. This new law is an 11% tax that will be eventually passed to the consumer and as of now it has NO lawsuit filed against it.

Hey everybody, how's it going? Welcome back to Copper Jacket TV. July 1st, 2024, is a date that everyone in the state of California should be paying attention to because that is the date when new gun control laws take effect. Now, there is one specific new law that is set to start, and I have been getting a lot of questions about it. There seems to be some confusion about it, and this is also one that does not have a lawsuit against it. This is something that I think a lot of people are really worried about and confused about. We're going to talk about it today, and I'll see if I can answer your questions. So, let's get to it.

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Okay, so one of the new laws that I'm getting the most questions about, starting on July 1st, 2024, is the new 11% tax. People are pretty upset about that. The reason is that things are already so expensive in California. You're talking about huge taxes, and then there are fees tacked on top of that, your background check fees, and then you have to do your safety certificate and pay a fee for that. There are all sorts of things already going on. Adding another 11% tax would essentially make a 22% tax on top of all of those other fees when you're trying to get something. This is going to be huge. It's going to make it completely unaffordable for some people. Really, what it is doing is stopping an entire class of people from being able to afford one of their rights.

One of the questions I'm getting is whether there will be lawsuits to fight back against this. Keep in mind that this is not an 11% tax directly on the people; it's an 11% tax on the industry. This 11% tax on the industry cannot be absorbed by the industry. I can tell you right now that margins are pretty low. An 11% tax on the industry would be damning, so what they're going to do is translate that 11% tax into an additional fee tacked onto whatever you buy. Even though it's not a sales tax, it will be a tax assessed by the consumer. People are upset about it, and rightly so. One of the questions I've been getting is why there is no lawsuit challenging this. The answer is that there is currently no lawsuit challenging that 11%.

Let me answer why that is. Before we talk about why there's not a lawsuit against this—because we would definitely expect one—I want to ease your mind a little bit by telling you that Chuck Michelle, the founding member of Michelle and Associates and the volunteer president of the CRPA, said that they're chomping at the bit to get to this. They're not the only ones. This gives me hope because CRPA and Michelle and Associates, especially together, are an unbeatable team and some of the best out there. That's at least some good news. We all want to file a lawsuit against this law. The National Shooting Sports Foundation represents manufacturers and retailers, and they have the funding. They're ready to pull the trigger and have lawyers lined up. They're ready to do it. It's not as simple as you might think to challenge this tax. That said, if there's a way, we have the will.

I'm going to put this in the simplest terms because it doesn't need to be confusing or drawn out. The reason there's no lawsuit yet is that there's no plaintiff. While this law exists, it hasn't taken effect yet, so nobody has been subject to that additional 11% tax. Since nobody's been subject to it, we don't have a plaintiff. There needs to be a plaintiff first who can say, "Hey, this has affected me in a negative way. I feel like it's violating my constitutional rights," or whatever the case ends up being. This case is going to be more challenging than other straightforward TOA cases. When we say that California banned something they are not allowed to ban because it's protected by the Constitution, that's a straight-up Second Amendment case. They can take that to court and use Bruin and so forth. This, being an excise tax not directly aimed at the consumer but at the industry, even though it will affect the consumer, will be a lot more difficult to challenge. But the fact that we have groups willing to challenge it is very good news. There is basically no case yet, and we can expect no case until after this actually takes effect because there's no plaintiff.

The problem is it's not a clear Second Amendment case because of its nature as a tax. There are a lot of tangential issues. This happens sometimes; you get involved in a lawsuit and end up spending tens of thousands of dollars litigating some side issue like standing or whether your case is a facial or an as-applied challenge. That just costs a lot of money and wastes a lot of time. One of the issues slowing down the filing of a lawsuit is the doctrine that says in order to challenge a tax, you first have to pay the tax.

I know this isn't a very long video, but I was just recently out in California for Mother's Day weekend, so I spent a few days out there. While I was there, I met some people, and one of the things we talked about was that 11% tax. There was a lot of confusion about it. People thought it was an 11% tax directly on the consumer. People were asking, "What's going on with it? What's the status? Are there lawsuits?" More than one person I met brought it up. If there's that much confusion about it, it should be something we talk about. So if you know anybody wondering what's going on, make sure you share this video with them. If you haven't subscribed yet, continue to subscribe. We've got some big stuff coming up that we definitely need to talk about, including stuff happening at SCOTUS. Again, hit that subscribe button and the little bell notification. Thank you all very much for watching. You guys have a good one.