Nearly all guns will have a legal upstream source, so it stands to reason that taxes can directly impact people selling guns used in crimes, indirectly impacts those who sell them under the table, extracts money from gun owners who as a class aren’t being as responsible as they should, and fundamentally reduces the amount of guns in circulation.
So one of the most common handguns is the Glock 19, which can be found pretty easily for between $500 and $600 in any gun store. I have strong doubts that an extra $55-66 per gun is going to fundamentally reduce the amount of guns in circulation. The person who buys a single gun isn’t going to not buy the gun, and hobbyists who have a lot of disposable income won’t stop buying new stuff, but will grumble a lot.
Anyone with nefarious intentions (cartels, etc.) would just buy in Nevada, Arizona, or other states anyways, where there aren’t as many restrictions on firearms. If you ever see crime photos of people with glocks, it’s pretty common to see 30-round magazines, which have been unable to be purchased in CA for years, showing that these guns and magazines are all coming from out of state to begin with.
Right, and don’t forget that guns are a lot easier to manufacture than drugs. All you need is a decent machine shop. So they could be made domestically with a night shift at a legitimate machine shop business, or made elsewhere and imported with the illegal drugs that are already being imported.
The black market will provide what criminals want. Evil men will always find the tools they need to dispense their evil.
Yeah, even 3d printed frames are even “good enough” for occasional use, especially if you buy all the other internals elsewhere, especially the slide/barrel, which are not covered at all by this tax (or by any other law in CA that I’m aware of, other than threaded barrels for pistols).
Quite true. Keeping in mind everything but the serialized frame is unregulated (and probably unregulatable) accessories, that makes assembling illegal guns even easier. Just build, machine, import, jury rig, etc a frame, and buy the rest legally including all the stress parts like barrel and slide…
You aren’t giving the black market enough credit. Right now most of the illegal guns start as legal ones, and are either stolen or straw purchased. That’s the case because that’s the easiest/cheapest way to get them, NOT because it’s the only way. Even if you completely cut off that supply, even if you somehow ended all civilian gun sales in the US, it wouldn’t mean a damn thing. Guns are not difficult to make. Any decent machine shop can make guns, and unlike a drug lab, that machine shop has a legitimate daytime purpose so it can operate out in the open, pay taxes, employee people, just have a ‘night shift’ that makes guns.
And even if we could somehow cut that off too, which we can’t, we illegally import billions of dollars worth of drugs every year. The government spends $30 billion a year trying to stop this, with pretty much no effect.
If it’s that easy to import illegal drugs, why do you think it would be any harder to import illegal guns?
Finally, you say gun owners aren’t being responsible because their guns are being stolen. How exactly do you expect to stop somebody who breaks into your house from stealing your stuff? You can put your guns in a safe but the thief can just steal the safe because that’s a guaranteed payday.
Nearly all guns will have a legal upstream source, so it stands to reason that taxes can directly impact people selling guns used in crimes, indirectly impacts those who sell them under the table, extracts money from gun owners who as a class aren’t being as responsible as they should, and fundamentally reduces the amount of guns in circulation.
So one of the most common handguns is the Glock 19, which can be found pretty easily for between $500 and $600 in any gun store. I have strong doubts that an extra $55-66 per gun is going to fundamentally reduce the amount of guns in circulation. The person who buys a single gun isn’t going to not buy the gun, and hobbyists who have a lot of disposable income won’t stop buying new stuff, but will grumble a lot.
Anyone with nefarious intentions (cartels, etc.) would just buy in Nevada, Arizona, or other states anyways, where there aren’t as many restrictions on firearms. If you ever see crime photos of people with glocks, it’s pretty common to see 30-round magazines, which have been unable to be purchased in CA for years, showing that these guns and magazines are all coming from out of state to begin with.
Right, and don’t forget that guns are a lot easier to manufacture than drugs. All you need is a decent machine shop. So they could be made domestically with a night shift at a legitimate machine shop business, or made elsewhere and imported with the illegal drugs that are already being imported. The black market will provide what criminals want. Evil men will always find the tools they need to dispense their evil.
Yeah, even 3d printed frames are even “good enough” for occasional use, especially if you buy all the other internals elsewhere, especially the slide/barrel, which are not covered at all by this tax (or by any other law in CA that I’m aware of, other than threaded barrels for pistols).
Quite true. Keeping in mind everything but the serialized frame is unregulated (and probably unregulatable) accessories, that makes assembling illegal guns even easier. Just build, machine, import, jury rig, etc a frame, and buy the rest legally including all the stress parts like barrel and slide…
You aren’t giving the black market enough credit. Right now most of the illegal guns start as legal ones, and are either stolen or straw purchased. That’s the case because that’s the easiest/cheapest way to get them, NOT because it’s the only way. Even if you completely cut off that supply, even if you somehow ended all civilian gun sales in the US, it wouldn’t mean a damn thing. Guns are not difficult to make. Any decent machine shop can make guns, and unlike a drug lab, that machine shop has a legitimate daytime purpose so it can operate out in the open, pay taxes, employee people, just have a ‘night shift’ that makes guns.
And even if we could somehow cut that off too, which we can’t, we illegally import billions of dollars worth of drugs every year. The government spends $30 billion a year trying to stop this, with pretty much no effect. If it’s that easy to import illegal drugs, why do you think it would be any harder to import illegal guns?
Finally, you say gun owners aren’t being responsible because their guns are being stolen. How exactly do you expect to stop somebody who breaks into your house from stealing your stuff? You can put your guns in a safe but the thief can just steal the safe because that’s a guaranteed payday.