In recent years, Seattle has developed a reputation for passing asinine laws. Recently the city tried to increase taxes on diet soda, because the drink is more popular among white people. In the past they’ve allowed 6th graders to receive IUDs without parental consent, and have enlisted garbage men to snoop through residential trash in search of compost that is illegal to throw out. Seattle was also the first American city to pass a $15 minimum wage law, which promptly hurt low wage workers.
So it’s no surprise that sometimes the city passes laws that backfire in very predictable ways. In 2015 Seattle tried to place a tax on gun and ammunition purchases, in an effort to curb some of the costs the city pays for gun violence. However, these taxes didn’t have the desired effect.
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.
Not only that, but the tax didn’t bring in nearly as much money as city officials initially predicted. The only thing these taxes have accomplished, is the decimation of gun retailers in the city.
In selling his gun tax to the public, Burgess predicted it would generate between $300,000 and $500,000 annually. The money would be used to study the root causes of gun violence in hopes of reducing the costs to taxpayers.
Seattle officials refuse to say how much the tax brought in the first year, only giving the number “under $200,000.” Gun rights groups have sued to get the exact amount.
But Mike Coombs, owner of Outdoor Emporium, the last large gun dealer left in Seattle, said the actual tax revenue is almost certainly just over $100,000, a figure based on information he says the city shared with his lawyers.
Coombs said storewide, sales are down 20 percent while gun sales have plummeted 60 percent.
“I’ve had to lay off employees because of this,” Coombs said. “It’s hurting us, it’s hurting our employees.”
So in other words, the city tried to raise money to pay down the costs of gun violence, but their efforts brought in very little money, and might have raised the costs of gun violence.
To be fair, there isn’t any proof that this crime wave is directly related the gun and ammunition taxes. But the best case scenario is that these taxes had zero effect on crime rates, hurt jobs, and burdened law abiding gun enthusiasts for no good reason. And this was totally predictable. There was nothing preventing gun owners in Seattle from simply driving outside of the city limits to buy cheaper guns and ammunition. So there are only two reasonable explanations for why these taxes were implemented. Either the political leaders of Seattle are painfully dumb, or they were deliberately trying to wreck the gun industry in their city.
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Stupid politicians. This tax worked about as well as the soda tax in Philly.
Soda bans are a good thing. The fucking colas have a pH of 2 and they make the amerikkkan sheeple fucking fat
Use pepsi to clean your coin collection
I fucking hate fat people
I don’t drink soda but I don’t support the tax, the next one could be for something I DO eat, like fruit or butter something that the affluent supposedly consume the most.
Using anything but acetone and a Q-Tip to clean your coin collection will get you a worthless coin collection.
Turn a $500 coin into $30 by being stupid.
Obese 50 year old female police officers
Obese firemen
What is it gonna take for this country to return to sanity.
In Japan it is illegal to be fat and a company can be fined millions for having obese employees.
Smokers and fatasses should not be hirable or insurable.
I’d pass off due to them drinking the radiated water from fookyoushima but I really think its part of a cult thing the left has.
Liberals are absolutely the dumbest people on earth, too dumb to recognize that fact.
Nobody digs in my trash. 85% of it goes to recycling which I dump in public recycle bins and everything else get burned in a 55 gal steel drum on my property. No Trash bill, live off their grid, be free from harassment. Find a property out in the country and go enjoy nature. Get your solar set up too. No electric bill in 28 months. Do thw math.
When people understand that the left want to tax us and kill us you will realize they did it right
Tax Politicians $1000 everytime they lie. Fine the Media $1000 everytime they lie. We could wipe out the Nat Debt in no time flat.
Wilson, the politicians aren’t the stupid ones. The people are stupid if they thought that the tax was meant to stop violence. The tax is nothing short of an attack on the 2nd amendment. Plus it’s free money from people the pols don’t like. The pols also have their foot in the door. If it’s constitutional to tax your rights, then there is no limit how high that tax can go.
The daily Muhammad.
A cop was stabbed in the neck today by a moose limb.
SNAFU
No, he was stabbed by a knife wielded by a Muslim. There were no moose at the airport.
If only they taxed a little more, it would have worked. (Sarcasm intended)
A shame that the increased gun violence didn’t happen to them instead of some poor citizen less able to defend themselves.
All the tax did was drive gun shops out of Seattle to the suburbs. The tax collected is much less than they claimed, as well.
It’s been 17 years since I lived in the Seattle area, but even at that time most people did not buy guns in Seattle city limits.
There was one place, Butches gun shop, since closed that was a good SKS source when they first hit the American market, but that they were it, if you knew anything about guns and Seattle. The Washing arms collector( WAC) monthly shows in Monroe and Puyallup fairgrounds was a good place to pickup guns and ammunition by the thousands. Fall city firearms AKA “gunsNroses”( it physically abuts a nursery) it a good old fashioned, old style gun store floor to ceiling narrow aisles full of guns and shooting supplies.
Only an idiot buys guns or ammo in Seattle. That is like going into a Kosher only deli looking for a Ham sandwich.
Yep they are still actively coming to Monroe! So many people reverse commute out of the city I will never understand why anyone thinks a city tax will raise money.
Used to be a good place to buy. Eddie Bauer was the high-end hunting stuff. Warshall’s downtown was great for surplus, I bought a Springfield rifle out the barrel there for $39.95. Lots of sporting goods shops through the 1960’s and 1980’s. Central Pawn by Pike Place Market had no less than 400 guns to sell daily, good stuff, too.
Fall City Arms has been gone for years.
Seattle, Ya cant fix STUPID!!!!!!
Why would anybody want to live in Seattle? It is one of the worst places for stupid regulations. the populus has been dumded down so badly and people are very rude!Iknow there has to be good people there but they are smart enough to stay out of the city. This is a haven for liberal stinking people and they deserve what they get!
Seattle, isn’t that the place where people were forbidden from building bomb shelters and preparing for nuclear war so that all the world would know they were peaceful people?
“Stupid is as stupid does.”, Forrest Gump
Why do things get so weird in this country once you go west of the Rocky Mountains?
I say the Seattle libturds were deliberately trying to destroy the gun industry in their city and restrict self-defense. Can’t fix stupidity. Can’t fix libturds anywhere. If the libturds tried this shit in my city I would disregard it.
Since Seattle has a black community, the violent crime would’ve gone up anyway even without the tax. Check the FBI and DOJ statistics and they tell you which group is responsible for the majority of crime in urban areas in the US.
Like we need the FBI and DOJ to tell us the obvious!
The black community in Seattle is well behaved compared to most.
It is the White liberal Democrats there that are scary.
Seattle has only a small black community. It is a very homogenous city and this is how things can get weird. Most people haven’t had a real conversation with someone who has lived somewhere else or is not white. This is partly how stupid laws get passed, because they look good on paper.
The problems with crime in Seattle is the PD has been ordered to stand down and the city is actively inviting out of town meth heads (who are mostly white, BTW.) Lots of violent crime in their tent communities.
Lets see, 41 out of the top 50 most violent cites are south of the boarder…… almost every single hispanic gang in the americas falls under ms13 who controls the prisons… blacks are not orangized at all in such numbers and no where near the burtallity.. NO WHERE NEAR
If you still need ammo, buy it on-line. Best time is when free shipping is offered.
SG Ammo.com, a good choice.
Ammoseek is a search engine for the best prices by caliber.
Demorates at work.
Historically when the City Council acts beyond their power with this type of law, the people that have been denied the right to protect themselves usually hang the council members. We can only hope the folks in Seattle get the job done so as to set an example for other cesspool cities. This law was nothing more than a backdoor gun grab.
Maryland has a 10 round ban on all mag purchases. You can own and possess them but you can’t buy them in state. I just go across into Delaware and buy them there where there’s no sales tax. Have a steak dinner while there.I’ve bought quite a few from JoeBobs Outfitters and have them send them to me as a repair kit and then assemble them. Only takes a few minutes to put them together.
I can tell those morons what the cause of (gun) violence in our society is caused by. I can save these morons a ton of money. It is called cultural Marxism (Godless, immoral society).
Gun-free-zones equals unarmed-victim-corrals. Look at New York City, London, Paris, Australia, etc. Discouraging honest citizens from defending themselves, their families, and their communities, always leads to the same thing. The police will do their best, but the bodies are the only thing to be found at the sight of the crime. Thinking people believe in the second amendment as written.
“Stupid is as stupid does” dumbass fucktards
How about a tax on city officials and career politicians?
PO’d Patriot, I’m sure it sucks to live in MD. Once the balloon goes up, we’ll all be WROL and nothing will get enforced. Our politicians in TN don’t dare come up with any BS like that. It would get stopped cold.
Seattle now wants to tax the rich more. Guess who will be the next batch of people to move out? Seattle screws up their own tax base,lessening their income. They apparently never had Economics 101 in school. They’ll give Chicago competition before long. Meanwhile everybody spends their money in the next jurisdiction filling the coffers of the competition.
It honestly doesn’t matter. State law prohibits an income tax. It’s a way for politicians to appeal to the rapidly displaced working class, and nothing else.
They will track gun use by marking ammunition.
__
“Microstamping” like CA wants? “Taggants” in powder? Sure, the thugs won’t get their ammo from somewhere else.
Good.
My family had 2 gun stores in the city, we moved them to the unincorporated county at the beginning of 2016.
Now the retail spaces we used to occupy are still empty and generating no revenue of for the city.
NO ONE BUYS AMMO IN THE CITY, they drive 5min north or south… morons.
Yep, just get on the bus or in your car and you can be outside Seattle in a very short time and buying whatever you want in the dozens of suburbs that surround it.
Guess no one at City Hall bothered to look at a map.
Homeless population explosion. Mayor McRapey. Gang violence. Heck yeah. Emerald city at it’s best.
Another case of politicians who live in high-security residences and work in high-security buildings deciding what the average family needs. The more a politician deserves to be shot, the more he is in favor of gun control. If they can’t do it aboveboard, they try to do it in an underhanded way. Seattle has a terrible traffic problem, why not tax automobiles to death. Fewer cars mean less traffic. That is how they think.
$500,000 to do a study? Let me help Seattle out.
The root cause of the majority of urban violence is lack of economic opportunity. That includes gun violence.
The social geniuses in Seattle proceed to remove money from the economy via taxes thus reducing economic opportunity for the citizens resulting in increased violence.
The treasurer of Seattle can just credit my PayPal account with the 500000 dollars.
How is this remotely Constitutional?
How about we have a special tax on all public speakers in Seattle? Perhaps a per newspaper sold tax as well.
How about if you assert your 5th Amendment right to remain silent when questioned by the Five-Oh you have to put a $20 bill in the coffee can at the Police Station?
As soon as you transfer this stupid un-Constitutional idea to one of the other Rights in the BoR the absurdity is well illustrated.
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Since SCOTUS has determined that owning an arm (and thus having that arm on your person) is a RIGHT, then taxing a RIGHT is tantamount to infringing on that RIGHT for those individuals that cannot afford to pay the tax. This has been upheld over and over for other rights, but not the 2nd amendment rights (yet).
Remember, the second amendment covers ARMS– not just firearms. So, magazines, ammunition, and reloading supplies are ALSO arms (as is a TASER, pepper spray, a combat knife, and a long-sword). Anything that was originally designed to be a weapon or is an integral and necessary component of a weapon is an ARM. Anything the federal, a state, or a local government declares to be a weapon is ALSO (now) an ARM. Theoretically, an ARM cannot be taxed out of existence, and any law that prohibits the transfer, ownership, use, and the physical carrying of said weapon is unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the various governmental bodies have no regard for the constitution (or for common decency in many cases)– and these matters have to be brought to the SCOTUS (at great cost!)
Obviously, since the SCOTUS likes to be “wishy-washy” in their decisions, they said “… but there may be reasonable restrictions …”, and “reasonable” means different things to different people.
I would like to see these Seattle laws challenged in the SCOTUS, then we will know for sure if it’s time to start the revolution, or if we can rely on the “Just Us” system to prevail on the side of The People.
I don’t know about the readers of THIS blog, but I do know an awful lot of people are getting their guns out, cleaning them, and loading up the magazines… The full-on “hot” civil war was going to go down if Hillary was elected, but everyone was surprised that Trump got in– so this is all delayed. Everyone I know is in a “let’s give him a chance and see what happens” mode. If Trump is removed for any reason, I would hazard a guess that the full-on hot civil war will commence. The new AG appears to be going in REVERSE– instead of backing off of prosecuting “victimless” crimes, he is INCREASING the enforcement of said laws, and DECREASING the enforcement of the civil rights statutes. That is not good– and is a “Black Eye” on the current administration (IMHO).
We have now seen that the police can break into your home in the middle of the night, and MURDER you, and there will be NO consequences for that– and the courts have backed this up! The government has passed laws that say that they can kidnap you, torture you, and then kill you, with no due process. The courts have backed up the civil asset forfeiture laws, where law enforcement officers (LEOs) can ROB you of YOUR PROPERTY, and there is very little you can do about it. (Remember: “Due Process is the process that WE do!”) What this all means is that (eventually), We The People will come to the conclusion that we have been “backed into a corner”, and our ONLY recourse with any encounter with law enforcement is to kill them all with extreme prejudice. All of the LEOs are laughing and happy that they have gained these “god-like” 007 “license to kill” (and “license to steal”) powers, and they *THINK* that this helps them in their ability to enforce the law– BUT, what it is REALLY doing is setting up the LEOs for termination by We The People. There are over 80 million heavily armed Americans that have HAD ENOUGH, and all there needs to be is a TRIGGER that will cause We The People to act. There are not many armies on Earth that can withstand a prolonged fight with an army of this size, where the theater of war is in our own back yard.
A *thinking* person would consider all of this.
But ken you havent thought this through…. you seem to think “we the people” will somehow band together Us Vs Them? Lol
So tell me what if one state sends leos to grab guns and your in another state are you going to war with your own leos? How many states can this happen before you attack your leos?
And since I doubt food would be selling at the market it would turn into a full blown civil war asap…
So you were sayin….
Ken, damn good post and nothing I can dispute.
So how do they collect this tax for on line purchases?
They don’t.
The state, though, is looking at a universal sales tax for internet purchases.
Amazon wants it, to kill their completion.