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BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today criticized a proposed “violence tax” on firearms and ammunition sold in Chicago and surrounding Cook County suburbs as a means of closing a multi-million-dollar budget gap. The tax proposal by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle would be designed to help close what the Chicago Sun-Times reports is a $115 million gaping hole in the 2013 budget. The reasoning behind this idea is that “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,” the newspaper said . . .

“Law-abiding firearms owners in Cook County should not be shouldering the bills for criminals,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Under Preckwinkle’s plan, honest citizens would be financially punished for the bad behavior of a criminal element that appears to be rampant and unchecked, considering the number of shootings and murders that have been tallied.

“This violent crime surge,” he continued, “seems to correlate with the election of Rahm Emanuel as Chicago’s mayor. Maybe President Preckwinkle should send the bill to Emanuel. Of course, he might have an empty wallet, considering the money he’s spent fighting court battles to thwart gun rights in the city, not to mention the $399,950 he had to finally pay to the Second Amendment Foundation this year for legal costs because the city lost the McDonald case.”

The newspaper quoted an aide to Preckwinkle who claimed the tax on guns and ammo would be “consistent with our commitment to pursuing violence reduction in the city and in the county.”

“That’s a pretty smug attitude,” Gottlieb said, “considering the body count so far this year. In September, just in Chicago, there were 41 slayings. That doesn’t reflect much of a commitment to reduce violence, but this tax idea certainly suggests that Preckwinkle – like so many other Chicago politicians – is trying to shift the blame for her problems to someone else.

“Perhaps Preckwinkle should consider an alternative,” he added. “How about a tax on politicians for impairing the gun rights of law abiding citizens by preventing them from protecting themselves, their families and their homes from the county’s violent criminals?

“There’s a problem in Cook County, alright,” Gottlieb concluded, “but law-abiding gun owners didn’t create it, and should not be taking the rap for it, financially or otherwise.”

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26 COMMENTS

  1. make chicago and Illinois shall issue and collect fees from the licenses and training requirements for permit holders. That should go a long way towards helping with the budget.

    If you really want to close the budget gap in cook county fine anybody trying to vote more than once or after they’re deceased.

  2. Cook County wants to tax our 2nd Amendment rights? I guess that’s the part of the constitution that doesn’t really matter. What next, a poll tax? A tax on religion? Maybe a tax on free speech to include newspapers, will finally get someone’s attention?

  3. Best hope this idea doesn’t catch-on elsewhere across the Country. I can see this appealing greatly to the cash-starved California State Government for one.

  4. This can easily be avoided with buyers purchasing outside the county. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can still purchase firearms without a FFL transfer (meaning drive it home) if you are a state resident.

  5. remember, its a TAX, not a PENALTY. Game changer with the recent Supreme Court decision on Obamacare.

    Goddamn Commerce Clause.

      • Any logical person would agree with you. Of course our politicians and justices are not logical. Since everything eventually affects interstate commerce — no matter how obscure the connection — the feds use the Commerce Clause to regulate anything they desire. That was the justification for the feds to make their federal gun free school zones.

  6. It was only a matter of time before the usual suspects pulled this one out of the hat. Taxing a constitutional right “for the common good” because someone, sometime, somewhere might just do bad things with an inanimate object . Bravo, Crook County numb-nuts, bravo indeed.

  7. Only violent criminals with guns would have to pay the tax, right? I mean, it wouldn’t be for peaceful, legally armed citizens, would it?

  8. Here is an easy solution for Chicago, Cook County, and the US!!!
    Impose a 3% stupidity tax on every politician who tries to vote against something granted by our Constitutional Rights!!! Everyday and every time they open their mouth or vote!!!
    Debt gone in less than 48 hrs!!!

  9. The bright side of this tax, if it passes, is that it would give Cook County politicians an incentive to otherwise liberalize the sale of guns in the Chicago area. More guns sold would mean more revenue.

  10. The gun dealers and sporting goods stores in Cook’s bordering counties of (if memory serves me) De Kalb and Lake must be liking the idea provided that their own local politicians don’t do the same tax to them.

    I first thought CCRKBA stood for Concealed Carry xxxx.

    Lastly, if they want to hit someone with a violence tax then hit the source of what is behind the violence. In prisoner studies, 85% of men incarcerated in prison for a second violent offense grew up in a single parent home which usually means a mother led upbringing. Those mothers were responsible for becoming pregnant with the wrong man or were simply themselves unqualified to be a parent. A Violence Tax on all single mothers.

  11. The tax collected “on firearms and ammunition sold in Chicago” would be exactly zero dollars considering that there is still a grand total of zero gun shops in Chicago. If this proposal included opening one or more I might consider it for a moment instead of just laughing nervously.

  12. As if… the tax will just drive people to buy elsewhere when they can… or possibly even buy from the same sources as the illegal guns they can’t shut down and blame on other localities. Ya know, the ones that all their laws were designed to stop.

  13. I like the idea of a violence tax, but I would inverse it. I would make it a violence tax credit.

    Any victim of an unsolved violent crime doesn’t have to pay state taxes until their crime is satisfactorily redressed.

  14. We have the RIGHT to bear arms, just like we have the RIGHT to vote. It’s been ruled uncostitutional to TAX A RIGHT! The whole things a waste of hot air.

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