BREAKING NEWS: Cook County, IL to propose AMMO TAX Monday

by John Boch

Sources tell Guns Save Life that Democrat Cook County Board President Toni Preckwickle will announce a proposed ammo tax Monday morning in Chicago.

The tax, set at one penny per round of rimfire, and five cents per round for centerfire cartridges, will be sold to the media and low-information voters as “paying for gun violence”.

This is particularly ironic as the Democrat Cook County States’ Attorney Anita Alvarez is in large part responsible for the violence in Chicago because she won’t prosecute violent criminals and demand long prison sentences. 

In Cook County, if you’re three young black thugs shooting into a crowd with three guns – one of which is an AR-15 – and you wound two, you get charged with a Class 4 felony punishable with a prison sentence of one to three years.

In Cook County, if you’re a felon illegally carrying a concealed handgun in your purse and you shoot at people on a busy street at 2a.m. – and miss the people you’re shooting at – you get charged with a misdemeanor.

Contrast that in Florida where if you use a gun in the commission of a violent crime, you automatically get a ten-year sentence enhancement.  There’s no negotiating that away in the plea process.  Discharge that firearm in Florida and you go bye bye for twenty additional years.   If you hit someone with gunfire while committing a violent crime, it’s an automatic 25-year sentence minimum.  Unlike Illinois, There’s real prison time associated with using a firearm while committing a violent crime in Florida.  

In the Sunshine State, all four of these individuals would be gone for a generation, not probation or a few month stint in an air conditioned cell in the Illinois Department of Corrections.   That’s probably why Florida enjoys its lowest rate of firearm violent crime IN HISTORY.  And why Chicago is Chicago when it comes to its reputation for constant, horrific violent crime.

Florida firearm violence hits record low; concealed gun permits up

(Naples Daily News) – In the so-called Gunshine State, home to the most gun permits in the country, firearm violence has fallen to the lowest point on record.

As state and national legislators consider gun control laws in the wake of last month’s Connecticut school shooting, Florida finds itself in a gun violence depression. The Firearm-involved violent crime rate has dropped 33 percent between 2007 and 2011, while the number of issued concealed weapons permits rose nearly 90 percent during that time, state records show.

“We’re happy to have facts and statistics put into these debates, because every time they do, we win,” said Sean Caranna, executive director of Florida Carry Inc., a pro-gun-rights advocacy group.

It will (likely) be modeled after the Seattle ammo tax – which the City of Seattle is now defending in court.  It took less than two weeks after passage for a suit to be filed against that city’s new unlawful tax.

Obviously we are opposed to such a proposal, for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that we see this as just the beginning of ever-increasing taxes on a Constitutional right.  In fact, we see this as nothing more than a poll tax on shooting.

What’s more, it puts gun dealers and retailers in Cook County at a tremendous disadvantage to mail-order sellers, as well as shops outside of Cook County.

The tax sounds fairly modest, until one realizes that it’s effectively an additional 20-25% tax on ammunition.  What’s more, for affordable practice handgun ammo, it’s approaching an additional 50% tax rate.

And for a 1000-round case, like the one pictured, it would represent an additional $50 added to the purchase price.  If you think that a $50 differential between a shop in Cook County and a shop a block outside of Cook County won’t make someone drive a few miles (or pick up the phone and place a mail order), you’re a fool.

Then again, perhaps that’s the goal of Preckwinkle and her gun-grabbing, soft-on-crime Democrat crew.  They don’t like guns and they don’t like stores that sell that which protects and defends what Americans love.

Should Cook County pass this bill, and we don’t see why they wouldn’t, then non-Cook County residents should lobby their legislators to vote “NO” on any bills set to benefit Cook County.  And to lobby our Governor to veto any bills that solely benefit “Ammo Tax” County.