The legislation to require gun owners to report lost or stolen guns is logical; if gun owners decry the costs of owning firearms, especially with the proposed gun tax, then it would make sense they would report their loss to police if and when the firearms are stolen, much like someone would report their expensive jewelry or vehicles taken. It would also protect owners from being wrongly implicated should their firearm be used in crimes, as supporters have noted.
However, the gun tax will only impact responsible gun owners who purchase their firearms legally, and not even those who buy from gun sellers who sell one gun or fewer than 50 rounds of ammunition per quarter.
Those intending to cause harm through gun violence aren’t typically those who buy firearms legally, through which the gun tax would be applied. Instead, those guns are acquired illicitly, through unlawful purchases or by taking them from family members who purchased them legally, such as was the 2012 case of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter.
These illegal guns are most likely the majority of the ones used in the 69 percent of homicides and 17 percent of robberies that occurred from January 2012 to May 2015 and among the 2,657 firearms that the Seattle Police have put into evidence since January 2012 — statistics Burgess cited.
It’s an inaccurate assumption that a gun tax would result in the decrease of gun violence. Guns are not the problem; the illegal users are. And the gun tax doesn’t scare them.