this might be an interesting solution for the really wacky shit?
Though you would need to do it on a more federal level.
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.
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.
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.
Doing one impossible thing won’t fix it! We need to do TEN impossible things!
Why ban or tax anything? criminals will get it anyway. Let’s legalize nukes for everyone!!!
Tax it higher than alcohol & tobacco.
Damn, the NRA is going to be fucking confused by this one. “No guns for the poors” is kinda their whole thing (@see the black panthers) - but poor white people are the majority of their support block. At the same time guns becoming unaffordable to “scary urbanites” will have the full approval of scared suburbanites.
This might honestly be the most politically savvy approach to gun control I’ve ever seen - it’ll drive a wedge between the 2a voting crowd and the 2a funding crowd.
I doubt it. Look at Illinois, they’ll just straw buy shit from neighboring states.
A demonstration that the laws work, but need to be implemented at a national scale.
Right. Which brings prices up. Which decreases sales.
And makes it so only the wealthy can afford them. Increasing the class divide. Which would give the wealthy even more power over the average citizen than they already have. On the other hand, it should increase money for the politicians to dole out to their best buddies. It also might reduce the population a bit as this might be the last straw for some. Not that criminals care. They ain’t buying them in a store.
How about if we make it totally illegal for people who live in cites over 40,000 populations to own any type of weapon. That would seem to solve most issues with city violence. Or is there a problem there also?
Just food for thought. What is seen a good idea at first glance almost always have some kind of unexpected effects that need to be taken into account. Some of which might not be seen until much, much later.
What about my second home in the mountains? I’m a poor person barely scraping by so when I drive my Bentley there, I need my full auto m-60 to hunt squirrels for dinner
Don’t talk like a fool. Make a better argument than trying to be flip and condescending.
but then how will I defend my famuhly from the 39,997 other criminals?
Class warfare is a serious issue, but I’m not seeing the huge threat that emerges from wealthy people having guns when less wealthy people don’t, because the police are already going to support the wealthy people.
If you want to talk about class warfare, let’s talk about wage theft. Let’s talk about taxing the rich. Let’s talk about universal health care. Let’s talk about inheritance tax and systemic racism. In other words, let’s talk about the big ticket items, not a $200 gun.
If you intend to “Eat the Rich” and prevent wage theft, you will need more than a cardboard sign. Even Tankies understand that to defeat the rich you need more than slogans.
Yes most crime is committed with legally aquires firearms
Where do you think illegally acquired firearms are sourced from?
PDF: ATF NFCTA vol2 part3, Crime Guns Recovered and Traced
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.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.
Murder is already illegal lol
Exactly. And that’s why this won’t do shit. The people who are committing the vast majority of those homicides and other violent crimes are not using legal firearms. They don’t go to a gun dealer and pay a tax and fill out a background check. They buy illegal guns on the street.
Those illegal guns can come from anywhere. Stolen, straw purchased in other states, or simply imported along with the equally illegal drugs that the firearm’s owner is probably selling on the street.
All this text does is punish the law abiding gun owners who are not committing crimes who do fill out background checks who do follow the law and who do pay their taxes. Those aren’t the people causing the problem.
Nearly all guns will have a legal upstream source, so it stands to reason that taxes can directly impact people selling guns used in crimes, indirectly impacts those who sell them under the table, extracts money from gun owners who as a class aren’t being as responsible as they should, and fundamentally reduces the amount of guns in circulation.
So one of the most common handguns is the Glock 19, which can be found pretty easily for between $500 and $600 in any gun store. I have strong doubts that an extra $55-66 per gun is going to fundamentally reduce the amount of guns in circulation. The person who buys a single gun isn’t going to not buy the gun, and hobbyists who have a lot of disposable income won’t stop buying new stuff, but will grumble a lot.
Anyone with nefarious intentions (cartels, etc.) would just buy in Nevada, Arizona, or other states anyways, where there aren’t as many restrictions on firearms. If you ever see crime photos of people with glocks, it’s pretty common to see 30-round magazines, which have been unable to be purchased in CA for years, showing that these guns and magazines are all coming from out of state to begin with.
Right, and don’t forget that guns are a lot easier to manufacture than drugs. All you need is a decent machine shop. So they could be made domestically with a night shift at a legitimate machine shop business, or made elsewhere and imported with the illegal drugs that are already being imported. The black market will provide what criminals want. Evil men will always find the tools they need to dispense their evil.
Yeah, even 3d printed frames are even “good enough” for occasional use, especially if you buy all the other internals elsewhere, especially the slide/barrel, which are not covered at all by this tax (or by any other law in CA that I’m aware of, other than threaded barrels for pistols).
Quite true. Keeping in mind everything but the serialized frame is unregulated (and probably unregulatable) accessories, that makes assembling illegal guns even easier. Just build, machine, import, jury rig, etc a frame, and buy the rest legally including all the stress parts like barrel and slide…
Illinois 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
I’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.
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
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.
Like 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. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951962/pdf/2270.pdf
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.
Bingo. I know several people who make significant ‘side hustle’ money by bringing in objects california bans when they travel there for other business. Someone else mentioned illinois has the same issue.
That’s just going to make it harder for people that follow laws.
Criminals love paying taxes
I think it was Chris Rock who said something like “if you want to reduce gun violence then you gotta make bullets more expensive.” You’re gonna see a drop in gunshots if every bullet costs $1k.
“Damn! He musta did something cuz he put fifty thousand dollars worth of bullets in his ass!”
This is a great idea. The flood of illegal and stolen weapons wouldn’t be taxed but they all need ammo to do harm.
I know home made ammo exists but I find it hard to believe it would ever be more than niche
And what makes you think bullets wouldn’t just be added to the black market?
They’re naive and desperately want to do literally anything since Republican fascists are focussed on not letting actual common-sense laws move forward.
You don’t need no gun control, you know what you need? We need some bullet control. Men, we need to control the bullets, that’s right. I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars… five thousand dollars per bullet… You know why? Cause if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no more innocent bystanders.
Yeah! Every time somebody get shot we’d say, ‘Damn, he must have done something … Shit, he’s got fifty thousand dollars worth of bullets in his ass.’
And people would think before they killed somebody if a bullet cost five thousand dollars. ‘Man I would blow your fucking head off…if I could afford it.’ ‘I’m gonna get me another job, I’m going to start saving some money, and you’re a dead man. You’d better hope I can’t get no bullets on layaway.’
So even if you get shot by a stray bullet, you wouldn’t have to go to no doctor to get it taken out. Whoever shot you would take their bullet back, like "I believe you got my property.
Pretty sure the guns i see the criminals use aren’t even legal. Crazy extended mags
The point of most gun control is to reduce the amount of guns not necessarily remove them all.
Of course at least some criminals will always have guns but lots of deaths could be prevented by just reducing the amount of people with illegal or legal guns.
It’s also much more likely for a potential criminal to become a criminal with a gun if it’s really easy to get guns, especially if they or someone they know (like parents) already own one.
Wait… You’re telling me that they continue to do crimes with guns even when the guns are illegal? Criminals? Really? I refuse to believe it.
This is the fundamental problem with gun regulation at the state level – they can be effectively abrogated by neighboring state’s with more lax regulation. FiveThirtyEight did a piece on this a while ago. In that article they show how strict gun laws in Illinois, California, and Maryland are defeated by guns flowing in from the surrounding states with more lax laws. The vast majority of gun crime is committed with guns which are illegally possessed, but were initially obtained through legal means.
Even though the law can be circumvented, it nonetheless provides resistance. Traveling to another state, filling out paperwork, paying extra money, etc all provide additional obstacles to overcome. If someone was having an acute mental problem and felt compelled to eat a barrel, a simple few hours delay in acquiring a gun can make all the difference. For someone planning on using a gun for criminal activity, at some point they might just consider employment as an easier alternative if acquiring a gun is too much of a pain.
We have already seen this effect in reverse with regard to immigration. Legal immigration is such a painful crapshoot that people are willing to surrender their fate to cartels as an alternative.
That’s great and all, but the data are in the article. Your hypotheticals don’t do much to change the numbers of guns flowing in from other states. If your argument is that the counterfactual would be even more gun crime, you’re welcome to make it; it’s just a really weak argument to lean into.
That’s why Mexico is suing Arizona, and maybe Texas? Cali has strict gun laws so the cartels can’t get guns here. They have no issues getting guns in AZ and TX
Yeah, that’s basically the legal theory of the suits. It’s pretty novel and there are a lot of issues with it.
Big part of the modern drug trade is fueled by arms sales passing South as collateral.
US arms exports are paid for with Latin American drug money. And those arms help gangs engage in the human trafficking they need to produce recreational narcotics and amphetamines at industrial scale.
Wait are you implying that regulating fire arms in USA would help to deal with human traffic and drugs from mexico?
I mean it makes sense, but doesn’t certain people hate mexicans and like guns a bit too much? Are they using their brains at all?
Wait are you implying that regulating fire arms in USA would help to deal with human traffic and drugs from mexico?
More describing the economic incentives of the opposition.
I mean it makes sense, but doesn’t certain people hate mexicans and like guns a bit too much?
On paper, sure. But in practice the folks profiting from the exchange can just blame the drugs and the crime on stupid weak leftists in government to deflect blame from the arms trafficking.
Are they using their brains at all?
Garbage in, garbage out. If all your information comes from gun-sponsored sources, you’ll end up with gun-sponsored views.
the guns i see the criminals use
Are you running up to folks during a bank robbery and asking them for receipts?
Or is this, like, guns you saw criminals use in a cartoon show?
Naw just around some major cities in California
How very non-specific.
over 80% of mass shooters at K-12 schools stole guns from family members, according to research funded by the National Institute of Justice
Stolen and ghost guns absolutely make up a large percentage of the weapons used in crimes, there are many reports and statistics to back this up. If you need some hard data I’ll be happy to provide or you could do a quick web search as well.
Stolen and ghost guns absolutely make up a large percentage of the weapons used in crimes
You’re leaning hard on the term “stolen” to describe a teenager using a parent’s firearm, particularly when the teen already has regular access to the weapon for target practice.
Similarly, guns that have been anonymized after purchase aren’t something you can regulate against.
Sure, that’s one of the missing links: owners need to be responsible for safeguarding their weapons or face consequences. Either it was an actual theft and the kid faces legal consequences for that too or it was careless behavior on the owner and they face partial consequences for the deaths and devastation
owners need to be responsible for safeguarding their weapons or face consequences
We played this game with Beto O’Rourke. He tanked his electoral prospects by suggesting he’d enforce gun laws like any other governor would enforce drug laws.
Between the Sandy Hook style conspiracy theories and the NRA hysteria, the onus is never on the gun owners. It’s always on the victims to not get shot.
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So fewer guns to steal = few crimes?
Sounds like extra taxes are a good idea.
I assume they mean the ones they show on the news after a mass shooting.
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