IL DEMOCRATS want to TAX your guns and ammo to pay for crime

The latest idiocy from the Democratic Party of Illinois is delivered by the Cook County Board Chairman Toni Preckwinkle. Preckwinkle wants to tax the law-abiding gun owners in Cook County to pay for Cook County’s crime problem.

Cook County mulling violence tax on guns and ammunition

Drawing the ire of the gun lobby, Cook County Board President Preckwinkle is eyeing a violence tax on guns and ammunition sold in the city and suburbs, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

Such a tax alone wouldn’t close a $115 million budget gap in 2013, but it could at least funnel money into the county’s $3 billion operation — where roughly two-thirds of the budget pays for both the county’s public health clinics and two hospitals along with the criminal justice system that includes the courts and jail.

“If we were to pursue a tax on something like guns and ammo, clearly that wouldn’t be popular with the [gun lobby] out there, and it may not generate $50 million, but … it is consistent with our commitment to pursuing violence reduction in the city and in the county,” Kurt Summers, Preckwinkle’s chief of staff, said on Monday.

Why not tax those directly responsible for the crime, instead?

How about adding a surtax in Cook County’s property taxes based upon the crime rate in the given neighborhood?

That would surely be consistent with pursuing violence reduction by giving the residents in said neighborhoods incentive to raise their children responsibly and teach them to be decent, law-abiding human beings, would it not?  Perhaps it would give these families a financial incentive to do the right thing instead of pretend like they didn’t see anything when crime does occur.

And for those families who don’t pay any taxes, perhaps redirect some or all of the earned income tax credits of residents from neighborhoods with the highest crime rates to the Cook County coffers.  Illinois does that for deadbeat parents, tax scofflaws, and those delinquent on student loans or who were overpaid on welfare benefits.  Why not add residents of the highest crime neighborhoods to that mix?  This would give those individuals a direct financial incentive to do the right thing.

Near the end of the article, the Sun-Times called the “gun lobby’s” guy in Springfield.

Who is the “gun lobby”, by the way? The gun lobby are the people who lobby for freedom and liberty and defend all of our Constitutionally-protected rights of citizens – including First Amendment protections.

This is very much unlike the mainstream media like the Chicago Sun-Times, who only protect the First Amendment while they bias their reporting against the Second Amendment and others.

But the gun lobby has vowed to push back hard on Preckwinkle’s idea.

“This is just another example of the blame game — Chicago and Cook County has a gun violence problem, Chicago’s got a high high school drop-out rate, they’ve got a drug problem, they’ve got a gang problem, but they want to make legal gun owners, guys like me, the scapegoat,” said Todd Vandermyde a National Rifle Association lobbyist who works in Springfield.

He said this is an unfair tax on a constitutional right that will hurt the poor.

“It is another way to enact a Jim Crow law and keep people from exercising their constitutional right, he said.

“All you’re doing is jacking up the price of guns and ammunition — for someone who can least afford it,” he said. “The problem with something like this is that you’re hurting people who don’t have the ability to get out of Cook County. So if you have someone in Englewood, they have to venture out to DuPage County, to Will County? I don’t think so.”

Photo courtesy the Examiner.com.