Meet Jon Grant. The community organizer (his words) and political activist wants a seat on the Seattle city council. Among his social justice warrior campaign planks is one to double Seattle’s gun and ammo tax. Like many economic illiterates before him, Mr. Grant apparently believes that doubling the tax on gun sales in the city will double the tax collections.
From his campaign website, under “gun safety”:
Seattle won a significant victory in the courts against our national gun violence epidemic, once again leading the nation where the federal government will not. In an 8-1 decision our State Supreme Court upheld our city’s gun violence tax which funds critical public health research. However, in the year since it was implemented it has become clear the law does not go far enough. The revenue created hit less than half its projected goal and therefore the tax on guns and ammunition must be doubled to fulfill our promise to adequately fund critical research on gun violence.
Why is Grant so excited to fund “critical research on gun violence”?
Doubling the gun tax to $50 per gun sale, and .10 cents per ammunition round can get us to our goal of raising a half million dollars so Harborview Medical can expand its gun violence prevention research. We can not kowtow to the National Rifle Association’s threats in the same way Congress has since 1996 to ban research funding on gun violence. We have arrived at a crisis level now too many times like at Sandy Hook, Orlando, and Cafe Racer.
So gun violence research will somehow prevent a mentally ill social misfit from killing his mother and stealing her guns to go murder school children (at a gun-free zone)?
Mr. Grant, please tell us how gun violence research will help stop Muslim terror attacks like the one at The Pulse nightclub in Orlando. You guessed it – a gun-free zone.
Or how research would have saved the lives of the four people killed at Cafe Racer in Seattle when a whack job decided to go on a rampage (at a gun-free zone). Not to mention the fifth victim he killed when trying to carjack a Mercedes.
So is Mr. Grant really so ignorant of basic human behavior that he actually thinks doubling the city’s tax will result in twice the revenue? Anything’s possible, of course. Maybe he thinks that people wishing to buy guns and ammo can’t simply driving out of his city to make those purchases.
No matter how hard you try, you can’t repeal the laws of economics. The shortfall in anticipated revenue the city reluctantly reported serves as just more evidence that markets adjust to taxes.
Another Castrati. Yawn.
The face of a pederast.
How about ‘triple the douche tax’?
“How about ‘triple the douche tax’?”
You’re on the right wavelength on that.
But not extreme enough. We need to publicly (as in the comment sections of Seattle newspapers) *DEMAND* they quadruple that tax. Their base will *love* it, the last remaining store will leave, and they can do a a victory dance.
The key to eliminating Progressives is to expose what they really want. When the moderate voters see that, they will recoil in horror away from it. (On the national level, anyways.)
They have already shot themselves in the metaphoric foot in Seattle with their $15 dollar-an-hour minimum wage. The very people they hired to analyze its success recently reported its actual impact has cut hours and wages by an average of over $100 per month, per employee, and that’s just when the wage was bumped up to $13 per hour.
The *key* to fighting Progressives is to force them to have ideological *purity*, to its cancerous roots…
They do that they’ll get about $0. The last gun store in Seattle will leave as soon as they see no one’s buying guns from them.
That is a feature, not a bug.
Saying it another way, it is a “win-win” scenario for gun grabbers. Or how about, “heads gun grabbers win, tails gun owners lose”?
Spot on. I believe it was never about revenue and just a tool to push legit dealers out of town.
Yeah, he’s not really interested in raising revenue or funding research is he?
Lord deliver us from “community organizers”
Preferable with helicopters.
There was only one dedicated gun store in Seattle before they passed this tax. That was Precise Shooter. They said they would move if the tax was passed and they did, moving north a few miles to Lynnwood.
There are only a few places left in the Seattle city limits that sell guns and guns are not their core business. Doubling the tax will raise nothing in revenues. People will simply drive out of the city limits to buy guns and ammo. They would have been better off not chasing businesses away. At least then they got their slice of the sales tax revenue. They are very crafty about telling us just how much this new tax has raised. They don’t want to say for a reason. It’s been a total failure
Curses, foiled again by those dastardly automobiles!
More than 80% of the revenue collected so far by the tax has been from a single retailer, Outdoor Emporium. The proprietor has been considering leaving Seattle since the passage of the tax, and consideration has been getting much more serious since the Supreme Court upheld it. Doubling it would settle it once and for all.
That would leave about $20,000 of tax revenue, assuming no other sales are affected at all.
And when they will lose a whole lot more money from OE leaving, will they realize– or even acknowledge– the error of their ways?
Will there be articles in the times about it?
Rhetorical questions, of course.
I wonder if it is a feature or a bug when the “urban poor” don’t have the mobility to travel to suburbland to purchase personal protection? Perhaps the local NRA branch could organize scholarships/bus rides.
ANOTHER liberal (D) problem.
Push back 300%.
Zero tax with 100% rebates for past taxes paid and incentives for purchasing new (or new to you) firearms.
I’d suggest someone explain the Laffer curve to him, but I’m betting he’d think it supported his position.
On the other hand, this guy would fit in perfectly at the Congressional Budget Office, where they’ve never met a dynamic tax proposal they couldn’t score statically.
Amerika just keeps getting cooler.
With “logic” like that, it tells me he must be related to Nancy Pelosi
They only got half the money they expected from the tax? That’s right, ya doofus (and you can’t tell me he doesn’t LOOK like a doofus) – go right ahead and raise the taxes again so that the funds to study “gun violence” will be cut in half yet AGAIN. Keep raising those taxes until NOBODY buys anything with the tax on it in Seattle and the taxes you collect for your precious “gun violence” study couldn’t pay the janitor at Harborview General. Utter, total, and complete stupidity reigns in that man’s mind.
It’s actually worse than that. They’re almost a quarter mil in the red between what they’ve already given out and the court costs. Moonbat math at it’s finest, it wasn’t always this bad.
how is it possibly legal to tax any constitutionally protected thing at a higher rate than the prevailing state/city/local tax? This seems like a poll tax to me.
You do know there is a federal excise tax already on firearms
I came here to ask that too. Memory says San Francisco tried to tax sidewalk newspaper vending machines to reduce the clutter, and got slapped down for taxing a constitutional right (freedom of the press). They could apply sales tax or any ordinary tax that was applied to everything, but not a newspaper-specific tax.
Either my memory is faulty, courts had a change of opinion, or gun taxes just haven’t been tested since Heller and MacDonald.
Is it really “leading” when you are leading your followers over a cliff?
Mmmm. Smell that left coast classist liberalism!
Here’s an idea, devote some of the energy you’re expending on sticking it to working class gun owners (the rich will always be able to have guns) and maybe address the fact that regular working class people can no longer afford to live in your meccas of left wing self-righteousness.
The hypocrisy of the west coast left is infuriating.
If the voters of Seattle want to set the precedent where they get taxed for constitutional rights, then let them deal with the consequences. This tax is not about preventing violence or funding the city or even gun control. It’s about people control.
They tried this in LA in a way—fingerprints for every ammo purchase.
and what happened?
Every store moved out of LA city save the big box store and set-up new shop to sell from there. some shop litterly moved a fe blocks and were in a ‘new’ city!
and in the “NET” age, just buy online and fedex that stuff to home!
If “gun violence” research funding was that super-amazingly important, they could put it in the city’s annual budget and shift money away from something else that’s less important.
But it seems the truly important thing is punishing people who buy items the progbots don’t like. It makes them feel good, like they’re Doing Something ™.
scumbag
wants to tax my 2nd amendment right
he can do that when we can tax women’s “14th amendment right”
In light of that dumbassocrat’s threat, every single firearm business in the state should immediately end all sales and contracts with the state for LEOs and LEAs.
As the state is imposing crippling taxes and sanctions, they should no longer be allowed to purchase any supplies from within state. Every buyer should be carded to identify them as a LEO. If so, all sales denied! And they should spread the word to surrounding states a total sales boycott is on against WA in it’s entirety for all state LEOs and LEAs. Regular citizens exempted.
No offense Larry, but read the article. This is in the city of Seattle, not the whole state. Some of us here in Washington actually believe in the Constitution and the BoRs.
It looks like Blue areas are getting bluer and less Constitutional. Some parts of America are gone forever.
Well, isnt he just the cutest little snowflake, in addition to patting himself on the back!!
* SARC*!!!!
I’m tired of leftists. They should be physically removed. Deport them to Siberia or Venezuela.
>>Doubling the gun tax to $50 per gun sale, and .10 cents per ammunition round can get us to our goal of raising a half million dollars so Harborview Medical can expand its gun violence prevention research
Aw, cute. Y’know, this guy could move to Russia, and he’ll fit just fine. Spending majority of tax money on worthless, though important-sounding, stuff is where we did catch up with some Western places.
even at Harborview Medical Center, the place where they are purported to do the research, they have already noted that the people getting shot have already been shot before. Mostly gangbang issues, they don’t need any more research money to solve that problem. If they want to solve problems in Seattle with tax money, how about getting the thousands of homeless people off of the street so they can stop defecating in the middle of the road and camping at every street corner.
If they were serious about gun violence research, they wouldn’t tie funding to a tax that’s so incredibly easy to avoid. Drive 20 minutes north, south, or east of Seattle and you can find multiple fine stores that charge no additional gun or ammo tax. The tax is not designed to raise money. It’s designed to chill the business climate for Seattle gun sellers. They want them out of the city. And guess what? A lot of Seattle voters would be totally on board with that. Telling the truth about their motivations wouldn’t put these politicians’ jobs in peril. They could still get elected. So what’s with the charade? Why double down on this BS line about funding research? Why is this dude pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining? That’s just rude, Jon Grant. Rude.
Double it? Hell, raise it by a factor of 1000. If you charged 2500.00 per gun purchase and 50.00 per bullet you could just completely end any financial problems for the city of Seattle!
I’ve been wondering when the civil rights law suits will begin against such laws. They clearly discriminate against the economically challenged. These laws and ordinances are a hindrance to many who want to exercise their 2nd amendment rights. Sounds like class warfare to me. Perhaps the good citizens could lobby the state for public assistance to help subsidize their desire to exercise their God given rights.
When I heard that their gun tax had backfired my sarcastic thought was “maybe they just need to double it.” Apparently dumb minds think alike.
Someone needs to implement a tax on ballots. Ballot is free but add a $25 processing fee, $50 if you want your vote counted. It would be just as constitutional as a tax on arms.
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