The California Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee recently approved a measure called AB 187, which puts a 10 percent tax on all ammunition sold in the state. Gee, and I thought California’s high tax and anti-gun policies couldn’t get any worse.
Assemblymen Rob Bonta and Roger Dickinson support the bill. Both are Democrats. Shocking.
They say that the new revenue will help cities that have high gun violence. “Cities throughout the state, including Oakland, are suffering horrific and increasing gun violence. AB 187 will provide the City of Oakland, and cities in similar circumstances, with sufficient street-level public safety presence to prevent gun violence and attend to it when it does occur,” said Bonta.
Nonsense.
Taxing law-abiding citizens’ ammunition will not curtail gun violence. It will now be more expensive for innocent people to defend themselves against armed criminals. AB 187 only makes criminals, who do not follow laws to begin with, more likely to buy ammunition on the black market to avoid the tax.
California legislators are also currently pushing bills that would let officials in Oakland draft stronger gun control laws, in order to “combat violence”. The thought that this would be effective is laughable. If gun control worked, Chicago would be the safest city in the country. Despite a history of strict gun policies, the Windy City is one of the nation’s most violent and deadly cities.
AB 187 would also fund new mental healthcare services for children in California. “Screening young children for signs of mental illness and addressing any issues early on is the key to a healthier and more productive adult life,” Assemblyman Dickinson said. “A limited tax on ammunition is a small price to pay for better mental healthcare for kids, reduced crime, and safer communities statewide.”
Hey Dickinson, instead of creating new taxes to pay for these important services, how about you stop the out-of-control spending on unnecessary, absurd programs in your state? A few of the (many, many) examples of waste:
-$200,000 was spent on “a tattoo removal program” in Mission Hills, California.
-$3 million was given to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft. Sounds like a pretty sweet “research job”.
Good grief.
AB 187 is an addition to Dickinson’s AB 760, which would impose a five cent tax on every round of ammunition sold in California. The tax itself is more expensive than the actual bullets.
California politicians are out of control. They irresponsibly spend their cities into bankruptcy, and then attempt to fix the problem by burdening law-abiding gun owners with new taxes.
The assail on gun owners across the country has become absurd and offensive. Just earlier this week aSecond Amendment supporter was thrown out of a meeting in New Jersey for criticizing gun control. And yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden wrote a letter to a child, saying guns are bad so “use chocolate bullets“.
Where does it all end?
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