All sticks and no carrots.

Ever notice how gun law proposals are about restrictions and few to none of them offer incentives to gun owners to increase or improve gun safety knowledge?

Has anyone seen any proposed tax incentives for gun owners to take additional safety courses? Imagine being able to deduct a firearms safety class every year from your taxes or getting a tax credit for it. These could be like CEUs, which lawyers deduct. Granted, lawyers have to take CEUs for their bar license.

A company I worked for was able to deduct OSHA training classes for employees.

Gun tragedies aren't all about crimes. And not every perpetrator of a gun crime is a criminal before they commit their first deadly crime (Lanza).

Gun safety tragedies are real. Escalation to domestic violence with a gun is real. Mass shootings that result from escalation in threat behavior is real. But these aren't problems solvable by restricting guns. Some can be prevented by safety, learning and understanding escalation behavior, and other knowledge and training.

But no one is proposing and incentive to gun owners, of which there are many new ones, to make use of training and education.

If a video game maker can deduct the expense of a gun they bought to create a 3d model from for a game, surely the average American gun owner who wants to keep their guns safe, learn more about threat escalation, protect themselves and other should be able to deduct this education.

The benefit to American society of me learning more and more about gun safety is far greater than me learning how to put on a respirator I would never use. Of course, this might solve some problems. We can't have that.

beatledog7 said:

It's simple. They don't want the population to be safer with their guns--they want the population to be safer without their guns.

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There are two sides to this debate and neither - Anti-RKBA nor Pro-RKBA - offered an incentive for lawful gun owners to improve gun safety, threat training, etc. by providing an incentive for increased training and education.

IMHO there is an inherent unfairness in a tax code that allows for deducting for coffee purchased for daily consumption in an office, but not for annual training on gun safety.

But before even reaching the rabbit hole of tax code fairness, it seems every proposal put forward by both sides is about threats and restrictions to gun owners, and the Pro-RKBA side has overlooked the entire possibility of incentives to gun owners.

The idea that it's built into the tax code is just an idea. It doesn't have to involve the tax code at all.


I find that we become better at things through repetition and exposure. People who rarely practice or think about things like safety, escalation, situational awareness, ever get good at them. Not being trained means not being good and not being good means bad things.

I'm just trying to start a discussion about what can be done from a public policy standpoint at the state, local, or even federal level, to incentivize gun owners to regularly and consistently learn and train on more and better safety practices. Obviously, "you or a loved one can avoid death or serious injury" should be its own incentive.

ATLDave said:

THE FOLLOWING IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE:

Lawyer CLE/CEU's are a business expense. Their expense can be deducted (not a tax credit) for that reason.

If you require the use of a firearm for your business, you may already be able to deduct training. But if you own a gun because it's your hobby (even a hobby motivated by a desire to be better prepared to defend youself), you probably cannot.

Do you really want the government to be (further) in the business of choosing which hobbies get tax subsidies?

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I'll just copy and paste this here:

gossamer:
The idea that it's built into the tax code is just an idea. It doesn't have to involve the tax code at all.
I'm just trying to start a discussion about what can be done from a public policy standpoint at the state, local, or even federal level, to incentivize gun owners to regularly and consistently learn and train on more and better safety practices.

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