SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Tacoma gun tax is gov. deciding what businesses are acceptable

Oct 30, 2019, 6:40 AM

gun, gun tax...

(AP file photo)

(AP file photo)

The City of Tacoma delayed a vote on a gun tax modeled after Seattle’s, but it still looms large as the debate rages on.

This has been an absolute failure in Seattle because despite Seattle passing this tax, gun injuries and deaths have not gone down.

Why? Gang-bangers don’t buy their gun at gun stores. They buy their guns on the streets.

In Tacoma, the city council will eventually vote on a $25 tax on all retail firearms, and a tax on rounds of ammo ranging from 2 to 5 cents per round, depending on the size of ammunition.

Dori: Tacoma gun tax will only hurt businesses, law-abiding citizens

This is going to be another massive governmental failure. It’s not going to do anything about gun crime in Tacoma. All it will do is punish the law-abiding gun owners.

Surplus Ammo in Tacoma told KIRO 7 TV that this new gun tax will likely put their store out of business in a matter of months — and leave their 11 employees without jobs.

This is what leftist governments do. The governments, not the consumers, decide which law-abiding businesses are acceptable and which are not. And then they do everything they can to destroy the other businesses through taxation.

This is not about safety. The people who buy guns and ammo and who go to ranges to practice do so for safety reasons. They want to make sure that they are capable and knowledgeable about owning and using a firearm. That is not what the criminals do. And criminals will have absolutely zero loss of available inventory when they want to buy a gun because they’re doing so on the black market.

The law-abiding gun owners won’t stop buying guns either. They will just buy them outside of Tacoma. That is what we’ve seen in Seattle. Gun stores have disappeared in Seattle, but the industry is robust if you go anywhere outside of city limits, like Lynnwood or Bellevue.

This is not going to discourage crime in any way. It is just another example of government proving to us that it decides what is legitimate and what is not when it comes to what should be the free market.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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Dori: Tacoma gun tax is gov. deciding what businesses are acceptable