It could be considered as regressive; that is, only rich people can afford guns and ammo, which is why and how the NRA would frame this argument.
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Donāt know about that. Congress has the the constitutional authority to tax. If Iām not mistaken, there are only a few instances where the SCOTUS has found a tax to be unconstitutional. Generally speaking, SCOTUS rarely find taxes to violate a right. It would be even less likely SCOTUS would find an increased tax on a purchase to be unconstitutional, as opposed to, for example, the poll tax states implemented during Jim Crow to prevent minorities from voting.
The obstacle wouldnāt come from SCOTUS, but the NRA, which has incredible influence over Congress. Thatās where the real fight would be.
So you want to tax guns out of the hands of the poor? I guess some animals are more special, amiright?
Also round about racist, as minorities are over represented among the poor.
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Yes, but generally taxes donāt specifically target constitutionally enumerated rights.
A tax based on race would be struck down as unconstitutional; a burdensome tax specifically on newspapers would, as well. I donāt see why ammo would be any different.
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I finally found some more in depth stats on Chicago homicides (2011). Breaks down ages, race, sex, district, weapons used, arrest records, most common causes. Lacks class data, but I am pretty sure you can guess which neighborhoods are the poorest.
With very limited exceptions, violent crime in Chicago is still limited to a few specific neighborhoods, and is almost entirely related to the heroin trade.
But no, we should focus on the guns, not the men pulling the triggers.
Very interesting how āpublic health problemā garners the likes, but āmental health problemā brings arguments.
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$220/1k rnds = $0.22 per round.
My 1885(ish) Mauser fires 7x57 rounds that are old and hard to find, and even I would keep looking if confronted by $4/pop ammo prices.
Youāre way off here.
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I missed the Dragon snackā¦ Didnāt see his reply.
I am not opposed to pricing guns so that no one would want them. Lol. Actually, Iād be ok if SCOTUS reinterpreted the 2nd Amendment to abolish gun ownership amongst the civilian population altogether. Similarly, I am not opposed to any demographic, including the poor, not owning guns. Iām perfectly ok with that. And, if I understand your comment, thatās not racist at all. You might say classist. Either way, saving human life would be a far greater reward than making sure poor people can afford to own a gun.
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I donāt think I understand your point. If the price rose to $4, you wouldnāt buy the ammo? What if it rose to $200? What if you didnāt have a choice? If you wanted to get ammo for your gun, you had to spend a heavy price? Would you just not buy the ammo? Assuming more affordable ammo was to be found, but the supply chain was unreliable, would you be more careful as to how you used your gun? I bet you wouldnāt ever mess around with shooting your gun if the ammo was that expensive.
I think you proved my point. But then again, I didnāt quite understand your statement.
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Your statement was:
Your $4/bullet quote is factually incorrect by your own numbers (by sixteen times!). Thatās my statement.
Understand?
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Reloading common cases isnāt that hard or expensive. It just takes a time, and care. Ammo isnāt special. Itās convenient that itās sold in the complete package, but if you made it as expensive as possible, people would just start 3D printing the cases and smelting the lead, which is actually very easy.
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Quite true. Suicide and gang violence account for roughly 85 - 90% of gun violence. Overwhelmingly handguns, at that.
Thereās a couple ways to address the problem:
Top-down: Further regulate guns.
Bottom-up: Address the drug trade and income inequality. De-stigmatize mental illness, raise awareness.
Or some combination of the two approaches. Every major step we could take to make a difference gets some sort of opposition, however. The right wing talks a big game about Mental Health, but fundamentally misunderstands what that means and how to address it. And they sure as hell donāt want to fund the changes needed that would make a real difference (i.e. social programs).
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I take it you know something about Constitution because you mentioned a race based law would be struck down as being unconstitutional, because SCOTUS would apply a strict scrutiny test, which ultimately means, the law would fail. However, a tax on guns isnāt race based at all. Taxing a newspaper, I believe the state tax that levied an ink (something like that), tax on newspapers is different from a tax on guns too, because that tax was against the newspaper or its use of ink (something like that.) It didnāt make any sense to me. However, thereās already a federal excise tax on guns, which is absolutely constitutional. Increasing that tax would be constitutional as well. This is different from either the race-based example or the newspaper example you mentioned. Totally different. Could there be a Due Process or Equal Protection argument? SCOTUS may very well find an increased tax on guns and ammo to be constitutional. Huh. Apparently, some cities have already successfully implemented such a tax. However, people drive to other cities. The effort has to be national to really be effective.
Maybe it was a temporary brain fart - $0.22 being close to 4 bullets per dollar?
That was a straight jump, there. Is that so well-established now that it needs no justification? Just askinā because I understand that thereās another fairly well-known armed gang in your country which appears to cause a fair number of deaths.
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Pretty much this argument has played out over the āsaturday night specialsā or ājunk gunsā category ofā¦value orientedā¦handguns.
They tend to draw regulatory scrutiny both because some of them are dreadful enough to have product safety issues that imperil the user as well as the target and because most non-military gun violence occurs under relatively undemanding conditions, so cheap 'n ubiquitous tends to end up at a lot more crime scenes than high-end gear.
Their proponents reacted to attempts to regulate them out of the market more or less along those lines: selective crackdowns on cheap guns are classist and racist; deny the poor the right to self defense; and are a stepping-stone for coming after the next-most expensive class of guns next, and so on.
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Supposing that one could regulate guns to be legally (almost) out of existence? What then?
Chicago had one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation for many years. Did the city attempt to use that law to locate and confiscate guns from unregistered owners?
Certainly not, and especially not in the areas most subject to gun violence, such as Englewood and Gresham. The cries of āracismā and āprofilingā would have soared to the ionosphere.
So to avoid doing this in a discriminatory manner, the police would have to proactively search for and confiscate guns from persons, vehicles, and homes from Edgewater to Hegewisch.
How many cops would this take, and for how long?
And what would it take to scale this to the national level?
If you rose the price of ammo to $4, you would still have criminals buying boxes of 20 and shooting people. Criminals arenāt the ones, generally, buying 1000 rounds online and practicing on the weekend, burning through several hundred rounds a session. You might get the criminals cutting down on shooting guns in the air at a party.
So your scheme hurts everyone BUT the people you are trying to target.
Also reloading blank shells or spent rounds is pretty easy to do. Reloaders would keep on keeping on, and I imagine some enterprising youth in Chicago could make ammo for all his buddies at a tidy profit.
But in your post above you admitted you are fine with no one owning guns, so I would just push that agenda if I were you. Go for the whole āno one needs them, confiscate and ban them allā. You would still be wrong, but at least youāre taking a logical approach to your goal, vs some convoluted scheme that really wonāt work.
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