Seattle Gun Tax Another Gun Control Failure

Maybe Seattle City Councilman Tim Burgess thought of the adage that when you tax something you get less of it when in 2015 he sought to fight gun crime by introducing a bill placing a $25 tax on every gun sold and a 5-cent tax on every bullet sold. There is another adage he forgot, and a true one -- more guns mean less crime.

Like every prior effort at gun control, Seattle’s ordinance only served to keep guns out of the hands of potential victims, not criminals who don’t care about legally purchasing a firearm, paying a tax, or submitting to background checks. The result has been more homicides not fewer. It is criminals, not guns, that commit crimes. As Fox News Politics reports:

“How much data do you need?” asked Dave Workman, senior editor of TheGunMag.com and member of the Second Amendment Foundation. “The data says the law has failed to prevent what they promised it would prevent.”

Seattle City Councilman Tim Burgess introduced the tax in 2015. It puts a $25 tax on every firearm sold in the city and up to 5 cents per round of ammunition. The measure easily passed and took effect January 1, 2016. Comparing the first five months of 2017 with the same period before the gun tax went into effect, reports of shots fired are up 13 percent, the number of people injured in shootings climbed 37 percent and gun deaths doubled, according to crime statistics from the Seattle Police Department…

“All these gun control laws affect the wrong people,” Workman said. “The gang bangers don’t go in and buy ammunition at retail, at least not around here. It certainly hasn’t stopped them from getting their hands on firearms.”

Read more at American Thinker