Some of what I comment on involves responding to "straight news" stories that manifest bias against and ignorance about guns, or to anti-gun editorials that flat-out lie. I rarely spotlight letters to the editor. Today I'm making an exception.
From Sherri Masson of Milford, MI in the Detroit Free Press, commenting on the increase in gun sales:
What if we raised the tax on guns and ammo even more?
...[L]et's treat guns and ammo like cigarettes, making the taxes so high people might stop buying them. Now that would be a positive effect of higher taxes.
The idea is not new. Making guns unaffordable to the less prosperous among us is an old tactic, particularly as it applies to minorities, as author and attorney Dave Kopel explains in "The Klan's Favorite Law."
For example, the Tennessee legislature barred the sale of any handguns except the "Army and Navy model." The ex-Confederate soldiers already had their high quality "Army and Navy" guns. But cash-poor freedmen could barely afford lower-cost, simpler firearms not of the "Army and Navy" quality. Arkansas enacted a nearly identical law in 1881, and other Southern states followed suit, including Alabama (1893), Texas (1907), and Virginia (1925).
Besides, as we've seen time and again, higher taxes would only be paid by those inclined to obey the law. So once again, the people not doing the killings would be punished for the actions of those who do. Predators get their guns and ammo by other means. If anything, Masson's idiotic proposal would increase incentive for stealing more guns, and make underworld involvement even more lucrative.
Ramped up turf wars, here we come. Meanwhile, the working poor will be put at even more risk.
That's how anti-gun zealots define "a positive effect"?
Still, everyone is entitled to their opinion. It's just important that we understand who is offering one in this case. Because either Masson or Freep.com neglected to give us a significant piece of information:
Sherri Masson [is] the...Vice President of Million Mom March of Michigan.
That she's a committed activist with a political agenda and hardly just an average citizen writing a letter seems relevant to know.
And here's something else that seems relevant, if not for intent then for effect, since a Milford resident recommends raising costs of the tools of defense in a Detroit paper: Milford is 96.5% White/non-Hispanic and enjoys over twice the median household income of Detroit, which is 81.6% Black.
So the privileged outsider wants to make it harder for good residents of Detroit to defend themselves, employing essentially the same tactics as those used to deny guns to freedmen--making guns unaffordable?
Astrotur...I mean, grassroots populism in action, right?
It brings to mind (yet another) public complaint from the Violence Policy Center's Kirsten Rand:
"The NRA has a stranglehold on a lot of state legislatures"...
In other words, those politicians whose careers are most directly affected by their constituents respond to citizen-backed grassroots activism. It would appear the irony escapes her. Or more likely, she just wants to spin it so the reality doesn't sink in.
Meanwhile, despite the FBI reporting national crime reduction at a time of increased gun sales, which is what Sherri wants to capitalize on, Detroit is bucking the trend. I don't suppose it occurs to her that maybe it's not the guns? Maybe, just maybe it's an indicator of populations most directly affected by, and responsive to, a continuing history of destructive and corrupt government policies and controls...?
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More Christmas Caroling
Yesterday, I told you about Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner Daniel White's modern update of a seasonal classic. He's presenting it in daily chapters this week.
Make sure you read parts one and two first.
Good stuff.
Scrooge's third visitor, from Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. With Illustrations by John Leech. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843. First edition. Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.
Comments
I can't afford guns and ammo now! Increasing taxes on them would make it even more difficult to practice at the range!
Why do people have to be so bloody stupid and hen force their stupidity on us???
This anti-gun attitude is no different than the racist rules of the reform period following the Civil War. It was a time where the Democratic Party joined with the KKK using them as their enforcement wing, today there is little contrast in the Democratic Party such as ties to anti-gun union SEIU. Chicago has continued this tradition being a breeding ground for these thug tactics and now it has become the Washington D.C. mainstay. History just repeats itself over and over. If you remember the NRA supports the exise tax on firearms and ammo and believes it should be enhanced to build gun ranges, clearly the wrong position, we must get back to basics and demand ALL taxes on firearms and ammo unconstitutional.
Unfortunately we are not as sparce in population as we once were when we became a country in 1776. With more people crowded onto the land we must make reasonable attempts to make sure people who do exercise their second amendment rights are properly trained and cautioned on the deadly use of firearms. No person should be denied the right to bear arms without individual due process in a legitimate court of law. What the anti-gun lobby is trying to do is legislate guns out since they are realizing Americans are speaking with their wallets and buying more and more guns creating a shortage of both guns and ammo. Americans do not like the health bill being shoved down their throats and they do not like an anti-gun law that denies them reasonable access to weapons/guns. The age of dictatorship is upon us and more by Congress than by the President.
Great article. Thanks
AzHamMedic,it is all about people control,nothing else
Great idea, Lady!!! And down here in the South let's re-impose poll taxes as we had through the first half of the last century. They were really effective in keeping "undesirables" from making elections come out wrong. I'm certain that the second word in the 14th Amendment was inadvertently omitted. The original language read: "All WHITE persons born or naturalized. . . ." You can imagine the confusion that omission causes today.
"The NRA has a stranglehold on a lot of state legislatures"...
And we intend not only to keep it, but to squeeze until they understand what "shall not be infringed" means.
One thing is for sure: you can't cure stupid and you can't shut it up. Still, most people can see it for what it is. Yet, I agree, it's very troubling that there ARE so many pinheads in America with no concept of the value of human freedoms and rights unique to America bought and defended with the blood of so many against so many tyrants and the apathetic, mindless people who allowed the tyrants to come to power.
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