jeffwCalifornia is about to tax guns more like alcohol and tobacco − and that could put a dent in gun violence
squid_slimeLovely another way to penalise the poor
BombOmOmIt will accomplish ensuring poor people have a harder time exercising their rights. Apparently that is something California is very interested in.
NougatMarx said things like that because he believed that his political and economic theories could only be implemented through violence. That statement was not intended as "workers should be able to protect themselves." It meant "workers need to go out and proactively kill people."
There are plenty of ways to interpret Marx’s writings, yours is certainly one of those ways.
Not like most guns used in crimes are stolen or sold illegally after being purchased legally and the actual causes of gun deaths aren’t related to how much guns cost.
Surely my home state isn’t just trying to grandstand and figure out new revenue streams to find to not fund poor performing schools to improve performance or prospects, providing healthcare, addressing poor police training, helping the homeless, addressing working poverty, addressing high cost of living, improving job prospects with a living wages, or any of the other issues that will actually help to address gun deaths.
But if there’s less ammo out there, there’s less to be stolen, no?
There won’t be less ammo out there. Alcohol taxes don’t cut down on alcohol consumption, tobacco taxes don’t cut down on tobacco consumption, and ammo taxes don’t cut down on ammo purchases.
Flying Squidtobacco taxes don’t cut down on tobacco consumption
The more expensive cigarettes have gotten, the more people I know have quit. Every time there’s a cigarette tax hike, I’ll hear about someone quitting.
The commenter above you was clearly not around in the eighties if they don’t think tobacco consumption has dropped. I’m amused that I’ve seen this argument at least twice in this thread.
The drop is cigarette use are a generational shift to vaping or nicotine pouches.
I can only tell you what I’ve experienced in my lifetime, and if it’s generational, it’s not amongst my peers. We’re in our late 40s and we all smoked as teenagers.
Sure, but can you rob or kill a crip with a pack of Marlboro smooths? People will pay the tax especially to murder people either in disputes or self defense.
The only thing this could possibly do is make it so people are less likely to go to the range, instead saving ammo for when they need it, in turn making them less practiced and therefore less accurate, in turn making it more dangerous for bystanders in the case of armed defense.
Gangbangers don’t train at the range, mass shooters don’t need accuracy for “fish in a barrel” so to speak who can’t fire back and are often trapped, and someone murdering their wife or some shit can usually do it at point blank cannot miss range. This bill is not only pointless, it may be actively detrimental. It only serves as an attempt by the leading party to say “see we did something, vote for us again,” while (imo intentionally) not actually solving anything so they can keep running on the issue year after year.
Sure, it may make some future poor people say “well I’d love to get a gun to protect myself because I live in a bad neighborhood but I can’t afford it,” but is “no guns for poors, only rich whities” really a desirable outcome just because “anything that decreases the number of arms is good even if it really only decreases for the poors and POC?”
Ok, but I was talking about the claim that tobacco taxes don’t cut down tobacco consumption.
And I’m saying “they may have, but bullets are different than cigarettes.”
That would be fine if I was talking about guns, which I was not.
Well the rest of the thread is, the cigarettes you mentioned were previously mentioned in the context of being analogous to this tax. In the future it might be prudent to lead with a disclaimer like “well this actually doesn’t have anything to do with the topic at hand except for this one specific thing you said, and it’s very important we ignore all other context from the thread, however…”
It might, except for the fact that you seem to be the only person confused about this and I don’t foresee myself catering my future posts to you personally, generally speaking.
Actually I’d argue that I am not the one confused, I’m replying to someone who was confused about the nature of the thread they posted in, which I only found out after they claimed that they were only being hyperspecific and I should have known that due to what I can only surmise is my supposed psychic ability.
In any case, good day. It seems we have no further business.
Those do actually cut down on consumption. Alcohol and tobacco are also addictive; ammo is not.
Criminals already have more than enough cash to buy plenty of guns at ridiculously high prices. This is only punishing people that follow the law.
Why ban or tax anything? criminals will get it anyway. Let’s legalize nukes for everyone!!!
You lost me, are you saying the tax is effective by costing more or not effective by costing more.
He's saying "crime pays," so the tax won't hurt them.
All this does is impact legal gun owners and makes it so the poor don’t ever have the means to defend themselves.
The only thing that increasing legal firearm costs does is keep the elites able to protect themselves and their lifestyles while making sure nobody can rise up against them.
This means more people are unable to practice with their guns, which has the opposite effect of making things safer.
Firearms are tools and an inalienable right for all people, not just the wealthy. The push by the elites to attack Gun Rights are so that nobody can oppose them when they keep increasing prices and their greed becomes an even greater burden to the rest of the population. Crime has been going down for decades, but the anti-gun groups still push the fear of guns.
The amount of spree shootings are almost insignificant for the majority of kids at schools, but they constantly make kids afraid of guns by pushing the shooter drills.
The fix to gun violence is fixing economic inequality. Stop treating the majority of the population as slaves and increase wages and break up the Oligopoly that controls goods and services. Stop allowing stock market manipulation and bribery. Start charging the wealthy people and multinational corporations taxes like they used to. Stop giving the wealthy people the ability to pay less Social Security taxes and let disabled people not be forced below the poverty line. Force the Stock Market to pay dividends instead of allowing stock price be the only value from investing. Finally, bring back pension funds, stop qualified immunity, regulate media companies again, and fix the election spending problems.
Every single one of those changes will do more to stop violence than increasing taxes on firearms and ammo. Hell, they started promoting smoking again because CHIP funding was down because too many people stopped smoking and the rich didn’t want to pay for childhood health insurance.
I’m glad I don’t live in California anymore, but criminals don’t pay taxes and won’t ever follow gun laws. Also, police have no duty to protect, so their only job in modern society is to fill out the paperwork when some criminal kills an unarmed person. Most police will shoot the civilians they were called to protect from the criminals and will be rewarded with paid vacation time. Making it more expensive to protect yourself and your family really is a bad call.
Oh, and just a FYI; when Biden reschedules Cannabis, it will make every dispensary under the control of the DEA. So the DEA can just close them all down or make up new rules to steal all the profit from Marijuana sales nationwide. The DEA will become the supplier of all Cannabis and everything that the last decade did for legalization will disappear.
Nobody in Government really has a clue and the Supreme Court will keep steamrolling our rights.
Boomer Humor DoomergodThe fix to gun violence is fixing economic inequality. Stop treating the majority of the population as slaves and increase wages and break up the Oligopoly that controls goods and services. Stop allowing stock market manipulation and bribery. Start charging the wealthy people and multinational corporations taxes like they used to. Stop giving the wealthy people the ability to pay less Social Security taxes and let disabled people not be forced below the poverty line. Force the Stock Market to pay dividends instead of allowing stock price be the only value from investing. Finally, bring back pension funds, stop qualified immunity, regulate media companies again, and fix the election spending problems.
Doing one impossible thing won’t fix it! We need to do TEN impossible things!
Those were many things on their own that would fix the problems. Fixing the pay inequality is the easiest, but making companies pay taxes would be pretty easily if those in power weren’t bribed to not pass those changes.
Gun laws don’t lower crime, crime has been lowered without them. The media makes good money with pushing the fear aspect, the same way that Trump gets media attention for all the BS coming from his mouth. The media never shows people protecting themselves with gun’s because it goes against their main narrative.
The main reason billionaires push the anti-gun rhetoric is because they don’t want to face the gun’s when people finally get sick of their exploitation.
TeonTax it higher than alcohol & tobacco.
AussiemandeusYes most crime is committed with legally aquires firearms
ZorgWhere do you think illegally acquired firearms are sourced from?
ATF traced 70.2% (1 million firearms) of submitted ‘crime guns’ to having originally been purchased from a dealer. An additional 22.6% (⅓ million) were from pawnbrokes. [page 7]
In 12.2% of the cases [page 26] purchaser and possessor was the same. One or more guns are stolen in 63% of household burglaries.
PDF: ATF NFCTA vol2 part3, Crime Guns Recovered and Traced
From conclusion page 41:
Traced crime guns typically originate from the legal supply chain of manufacture (or import), distribution, and retail sale. Crime guns may change hands a number of times after that first retail sale, and some of those transactions may be a theft or violate one or more regulations on firearm commerce.
Firearms Stolen During Household Burglaries and Other Property Crimes, 2005-2010
ADVANCE FOR RELEASE AT 10:00 A.M. EDT Bureau of Justice Statistics THURSDAY, NOVMEBER 8, 2012 Contact: Kara McCarthy (202) 307-1241 HTTP://WWW.BJS.GOV/ After hours: (202) 598-0556 ABOUT 1.4 MILLION GUNS STOLEN DURING HOUSEHOLD BURGLARIES AND OTHER PROPERTY CRIMES FROM 2005 THROUGH 2010
ikiddLike it did to alcohol and tobacco use?
Smoking is so much more prevalent in other states than it is in California. Even vaping has been dropping off recently. California overall has less binge drinking than other states but I’d attribute that as much to good weather and lots to do instead of just taxes.
Both of those are way down from when I was in my twenties.
That’s education and culture. People will pay whatever it takes to feed their addictions. It’s cultural disappoval that changes behaviour.
Taxes are an effective way of reducing at least tobacco usage.
Tons of studies prove that.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/…/2270.pdf
SternIllinois has some fairly strict gun laws… which is why so many guns used in crimes there come from all the states surrounding it. So I ask… do Arizona, Utah, and Nevada have these taxes as well?
I’m not against gun control, but it seems to me that a state level fix ain’t it.
In the US, especially in this polarised climate, the vast majority of changes to law start with one state, and then another, and then another until slowly it gets adopted around the country.
States have long been called “laboratories of democracy” for exactly this reason. I’d actually argue that the current climate calcifies the process of policy experimentation in states and among them.
california is big. It may work better than other places, but a fed licensing program would be ideal
Of course, it’s illegal for an FFL to sell a handgun to anyone with an out of state license unless they ship it to an FFL in the person’s home state for the NICs check and to make sure it complies with local laws. As for rifles, while there is no federal requirement stating the same, you’d be very hard pressed to find an FFL that is going to sell one to a person with an IL license unless it goes through the same system, all FFLs especially in border states know IL laws and are obviously hesitant to run afoul of them, iirc there is actually a local IL statute prohibiting the buying of long guns out of state without sending them through an FFL (like federally for pistols but for IL specifically with the long guns too) in it’s own that the neighboring FFLs would get in trouble with the ATF for violating, not to mention FOID and standard capacity mag bans
danI’m not against gun control, but it seems to me that a state level fix ain’t it.
Views like this are why nothing gets done. Starting small is better than doing nothing at all.
It’s hard to change things for the whole country. It’s a lot easier to change things just in one state and observe the effects. If the changes work, other states may choose to do the same thing.
This is the case for basically every issue, yeah, this is generally why telling people to start with politics at the local level isn’t really a great suggestion for most people.
You can’t fund inter-city trains at the local level, really, that has to be done at the state level at the very least, usually in a state like california, only, and usually it has to be done with federal funding. If you don’t have inter-city trains or public transit, then it’s hard to make a walkable city. Basically what I’m saying is that it’s not atomizable, it has to be integrated with the rest of the network, which is why even the best US cities are pretty car-centric.
This is true for a litany of other political issues besides just public transit.
Issue is gonna be with stolen guns and ammo also it’s not far to get to the Nevada border if people wanna stock up
That’s not an issue. Reduction is the goal, not elimination.
Oh well, it’ll suck for me, but at least the poors won’t be armed.
That’s the real point. This will have no impact on violence, let alone make a dent. It’s about the controlling class disarming the working class. If only Marx had said something about this.
Go pull the other one. Of course it will have an impact on violence. You can argue that the risk is not worth the rewards, but clearly raising prices will deter purchases, and in turn reduce gun violence incidents.
Sir_KevinThat’s just going to make it harder for people that follow laws.
DestideCriminals love paying taxes
I’ve been saying for years this was going to be what happens, instead of common sense gun laws they are just going to tax the shit out of it. Which sucks for law abiding responsible gun owners who just want to hunt or defend themselves. This is what happens when one side refuses to come to the negotiating table.
CorkyskogI don’t get how it’s even constitutional. How are even permitting fees constitutional? I could see having the requirements exist, but I don’t see how forcing a cost can be.
Does the constitution say that guns need to be free?
I would consider it an infringement, do any other rights include a fee? The only reason some states haven’t made it prohibitively expensive is that it is more likely to go to the courts.
Neither side wants to negotiate here. Democrats want bans. Republicans want as much access as possible. Both sides view compromise as a temporary step towards their ultimate goal.
Chaotic EntropyWith respect, that’s bullshit. Common sense gun reform is on the table almost monthly, after every single mass shooting pretty much… which happen with great regularity. The simplest of measures is treated like a slippery slope to full bans and so nothing at all is allowed to progress. From the outside looking in, a nationwide firearms ban is a bogeyman used to prevent anything happening at all.
The simplest of measures is treated like a slippery slope to full bans
Is it not a first step leading to full bans? Look at this very thread.
Public opinion does not equal policy, and what you’re effectively saying is that there is no negotiation possible. Moving an inch could lose you a foot, so no movement is possible.
Don’t pretend that it is both sides who refuse to “negotiate”, when one side views any change at all as unacceptable compromise.
Moving an inch could lose you a foot, so no movement is possible.
I mean, this is a succinct description. You’re saying it as a criticism, but it makes perfect sense.
Great. So everyone will just continue dying or being in fear of dying in mass shootings, regular shootings, and more. This will continue for the rest of time because one side is scared of making a positive change to the situation.
Not scared, just unwilling.
Unwilling due to their fear. Of their donors, of their electorate, of losing control. Pick your poison.