Poll Tax VS. Right To Keep Arms

There was a time when some Southern states used a "poll tax" to exclude Blacks, Native Americans and poor Whites from executing their individual right to vote. Although the final destruction of those, very Unamerican, efforts was the enactment of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, the basis of such a reversal in this and other civil rights cases was the "equal rights provisions" of the 14th Amendment.

In the next campaign to ensure full and individual civil rights to those Americans who wish to buy and keep arms, I suggest that the same "equal rights" precedents be applied in overturning those right-killing charges.

It seems to me that the very costly registration, registration application, special taxes on ammunition and "gun inspection" fees are all reincarnations of a poll tax designed to keep poor or "less rich" people from keeping arms.

We should all keep in mind that, even after the poll tax was limited or eliminated, some jurisdictions attempted to achieve the same results by administrating impossible to understand questions and those subject to the arbitrary-and-capricious decisions of the anti-rights examiners. We should take the position that American citizenship, the statutory age of adulthood and freedom from dangerous mental disease or criminal record should be the only test to keep (And bear?) arms.

On the other hand, perhaps we should enact a $Million per year tax on daily newspapers to be paid before they print editorials as a demonstration of possible limits on the Bill Of Rights that so many wish to apply to keeping arms or the "free practice of religion".