Biden to impose $200 Gun Tax

I am also against the idea because once again we are only doing this to firearms when other manufacturers don't get that same treatment. There is one pretty common thing in particular that causes way more harm and death to American citizens every year than guns yet we don't get to hold "them" accountable for the actions of the operator. Vehicles.

I've been in 3 accidents in my life and one in particular nearly 20 years ago would have cost me my life in a head on collision on the highway if I hadn't swerved and rear ended the car in front of me instead. A drunk driver driving a white Ford F-150 was barreling down the wrong side of the highway doing about 60mph, I swerved out of the lane and the car in front of me slammed on the brakes and I smashed into the back of him. Better than death I suppose. We both filed the police reports and gave our statements and that truck was found and driver arrested later that night. The PERSON driving that truck was held accountable for driving recklessly while intoxicated. I am not legally allowed to sue Ford for compensation nor can I legally sue Anheuser Busch for that incident. I also received no compensation from the government from their alcohol taxes or license and registration taxes either. All I got was insurance that I pay into anyway and that was it. Plenty of states tax alcohol and other forms of "sin tax" yet victims of alcohol misuse don't get compensated from that pool of money being collected by the government. The government collects hundreds of millions if not billions in tax revenue from licenses and registration and in some states "vehicle inspections". Victims of car accidents don't get government compensation from those pools of money the government collects for "allowing" you to operate vehicles on their public roads.

So if the government doesn't compensate me when a drunken idiot nearly kills me and causes me to total my vehicle and injure me then why should they compensate me if somebody takes their AR-15 and shoots me with it? The government doesn't even step in and compensate me if the idiot that hits me doesn't have insurance, "uninsured motorist" is something I have to specifically pay extra for on my own insurance if I want to get covered for that.

As I've stated before I am fine with stuff like this as long as it's treated equally across the board. If I can't sue Ford when I get hit my an F-150 then I can't sue Colt if I get shot by an AR-15. If the government doesn't want to pay me out of it's pool of vehicle based taxes when I get injured or killed by a vehicle then it shouldn't pay me by taxing firearms if I get shot by one. Now if the government wants to make a new proposal that it'll start directly compensating citizens who become victims of the misuse of products that are taxed out of the pool of money garnered from said taxes then I'll be willing to entertain this idea. Right now my state government is proposing a statewide alcohol tax increase for revenue purposes, I'm fine with that as long as the next time someone in this state is injured or killed in any way related to alcohol they are directly compensated from that new pool of money the government just earned from doubling the taxes on booze. If not, then I'm not supporting taxes on guns for that purpose.

 

The difference is also that vehicles are not Constitutionally protected Rights, firearms are. And yes while you need a license to operate a vehicle on public roads as well as insurance you don't need a license nor insurance to consume alcohol. The dealership may be held liable if they let you drive off the lot without having insurance but I can't be held liable if I sell you my car and you drive off and kill somebody without having insurance. Same thing with alcohol, sure if the bar lets you drive off drunk and injure or kill somebody then yes they MAY be held responsible (not always) but if I purchase a six pack from the grocery store then drink it and go out driving and kill somebody the grocery store cannot be held liable for that. The store also cannot be held liable if I drink their booze and decide to give some to my underage kids or something, or if I get drunk and decide to walk outside and assault the neighbor.

All of this sort of stuff is broadly covered under medical insurance which, since Obamacare, is pretty much mandatory to have if you exist in the US. And folks misusing things and causing harm to others is covered under the ability to sue them for it. If we try to go down this path then it's a never ending rabbit hole. As you stated before, virtually anything can be "weaponized" and if we are in the business of providing a way for victims of injury or death to be compensated then we need to be fair across the board. In the US knives and other cutting instruments are used 4x as often to kill other people than rifles of any type, including semi auto ones. And blunt force objects are used slightly more than rifles as well. Cutting instruments are designed to kill things, that was the weapon or choice for that purpose for thousands of years prior to the widespread use of gunpowder, and even today with things like AR-15s on the market knives are still used 4x as often to kill than those are resulting in 1400+ homicides for knives at 350+ for rifles annually.

So if we are going to require insurance or a tax or something for victim compensation purposes then we need to be both fair and logical across the board. I can go to the sporting goods store and purchase a baseball bat and decide to go bash my neighbors head in with it, should I be required to own some form of compensation insurance prior to purchasing a blunt object like a bat? Remember, stuff like hammers and bats literally are used in more homicides in the US than rifles including the semi-auto version. Same with knives, should I be required to have compensation insurance prior to purchasing a knife? I can use it to cut my carrots or stab you to death, and based on raw data stabbing you to death with a knife is done 4x as often as shooting you to death with a semi auto rifle in the US.

So if the real end goal is to provide some sort of compensation for the victims then we need to leave emotion out of the equation and look at the raw statistics. 4x more Americans are stabbed to death each year than are shot and killed by rifles and slightly more are bludgeoned to death and nearly double are simply beaten to death with one's hands and/or feet. So if we want to mandate some sort of insurance or tax for victims of things that others can use to hurt you then it makes logical sense to start with the one's that are actually used to hurt people the most. From this standpoint it doesn't make logical sense to require liability insurance for the thing ranked 7th overall in homicide weapons of choice in America. Based on this reasoning and last years FBI crime statistics, liability insurance for "assault rifles" would help compensate about 360 people. Meanwhile the families of the 1400+ Americans stabbed to death or the nearly 400 beaten to death with bats and hammers receive nothing because we aren't requiring liability insurance for those things. So what about those families? What do they get? Or are we operating under the assumption that getting shot to death with a 5.56 round from an AR-15 and that family losing their prime breadwinner is somehow worse than if said prime breadwinner is stabbed to death instead? Which is in fact 4x more likely to happen to them.

On a fair note we can even stick to the fact that guns kill people often and should be treated "special". This makes this entire argument even more outrageous then because when talking about the the leading weapon of choice then handguns beat out everything else by a significant order of magnitude and they beat out rifles, including semi-auto ones, by a factor of 17x. So if we want to tax or require liability insurance to own AR-15s then why in the hell is there no $200 tax proposal to own a handgun when handguns were used in 6300+ murders last year and rifles were used in 364...

Out of all the weapons Americans use to kill each other every year rifles are literally ranked number 7. Why exactly are we going after them first again? So we are making proposals to help approximately 364 people per year while telling the other 7100+ folks families' who were killed by other weapons too bad if you wanted compensation then your breadwinner should have been one of the rare people shot by one of the scary looking military guns instead. That makes no rational sense.