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Ridiculous bullet tax (Followup)
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Ridiculous bullet tax
WITH ALL THE significant and unsolved problems facing the California Legislature, one wonders why some members waste their time on senseless measures that solve nothing while needlessly irritating a segment of the population.
The latest bit of nonsense comes from Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, the person who helped concoct the disastrous Coliseum deal with the Raiders. His most recent bit of mischief is a proposal to put a measure on the November ballot that seeks to impose a nickel-a-bullet tax on every round of ammunition sold in California.
Perata's justification for another nuisance tax is that it would raise money to offset the costs of emergency and trauma centers that treat people with gunshot wounds. True, trauma centers and emergency rooms do spend a lot of money treating victims of gunfire. But only a tiny percentage of gun owners are responsible for shootings. Why penalize all gun owners in the state?
Single-product sales taxes, like all sales taxes, fall disproportionately on the poor. Even worse, they target only a segment of the population, making it easier for the general population to vote for the special taxes.
The result is a host of taxes on particular products until virtually everyone in the state is paying. Such piecemeal legislation is a poor and inequitable way to set tax policy.
Perata doesn't even know how much money his bullet tax would raise, but he understands it would be a small fraction of the cost of running emergency rooms. He justifies it by saying the tax would provide financing from those sources that he believes disproportionately burden emergency rooms and trauma centers. How can that be when the vast majority of gun owners have nothing to do with emergency room costs?
If Perata wants to tax a group that is larger than gun owners and is responsible for far more emergency room patients, he should target automobile owners and drivers. Of course, such a tax would affect just about every California voter and wouldn't stand a chance of passage.
It appears that Perata wants to insult gun owners as much as he wants to raise money. Let's hope this measure never receives the two-thirds vote in the Legislature it needs to get on the ballot in November, and if it does that voters will have the sense to reject it. http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/2002/04/18/news/editorial/3087591.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
WITH ALL THE significant and unsolved problems facing the California Legislature, one wonders why some members waste their time on senseless measures that solve nothing while needlessly irritating a segment of the population.
The latest bit of nonsense comes from Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, the person who helped concoct the disastrous Coliseum deal with the Raiders. His most recent bit of mischief is a proposal to put a measure on the November ballot that seeks to impose a nickel-a-bullet tax on every round of ammunition sold in California.
Perata's justification for another nuisance tax is that it would raise money to offset the costs of emergency and trauma centers that treat people with gunshot wounds. True, trauma centers and emergency rooms do spend a lot of money treating victims of gunfire. But only a tiny percentage of gun owners are responsible for shootings. Why penalize all gun owners in the state?
Single-product sales taxes, like all sales taxes, fall disproportionately on the poor. Even worse, they target only a segment of the population, making it easier for the general population to vote for the special taxes.
The result is a host of taxes on particular products until virtually everyone in the state is paying. Such piecemeal legislation is a poor and inequitable way to set tax policy.
Perata doesn't even know how much money his bullet tax would raise, but he understands it would be a small fraction of the cost of running emergency rooms. He justifies it by saying the tax would provide financing from those sources that he believes disproportionately burden emergency rooms and trauma centers. How can that be when the vast majority of gun owners have nothing to do with emergency room costs?
If Perata wants to tax a group that is larger than gun owners and is responsible for far more emergency room patients, he should target automobile owners and drivers. Of course, such a tax would affect just about every California voter and wouldn't stand a chance of passage.
It appears that Perata wants to insult gun owners as much as he wants to raise money. Let's hope this measure never receives the two-thirds vote in the Legislature it needs to get on the ballot in November, and if it does that voters will have the sense to reject it. http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/2002/04/18/news/editorial/3087591.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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