Cook County guns and ammo tax, struck down by Illinois Supreme Court, is back on the books for now

[Deanimator]

I generally agree, but note that the purpose of the Pittman-Robertson excise tax on firearms is to support range and habitat development, firearms training and instruction, and to benefit shooting sports. Non game species also benefit from the habitat enhancement. This is a case of a pre-existing 11 percent excise tax being modified to actually benefit the users, and is a rare bright light in the use of taxation.

That's true, albeit such benign purposes are so vanishingly rare as to be on a par with being attacked by a grizzly bear, a polar bear and a Komodo dragon, all on the same day in Rockefeller Center.

Overwhelmingly, when a fundamental right is taxed, it is with malice and with intent to suppress that right or to restrict its exercise to a privileged few.

 

[TomJ]

They're saying the money will go towards violence prevention. Don't be shocked to learn that the money went elsewhere, similar to what they've done with money from FOID's and CC permits. I was born and raised there and recently moved to Wisconsin. Unfortunately this is what the majority of the people of Cook County vote for time after time. I feel bad for gun owners who are stuck there as not everyone can leave due to work or family situations, but the people who vote for this corruption are getting exactly what they deserve. Things are going from bad to worse there. It's a shame that the people who don't vote for this have to also pay the price.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

... The nowadays equivalent of $2,617.39 for a $200 tax stamp was not chump change 87 years ago. ...

87 years ago $200 was the price of a Model 1921 Thompson submachine gun which I suspect is the source of the NFA tax levy. ($400 was the price of a Ford automobile.)

But, back to sin taxes, the high tax was intended to discourage sales, not raise revenue from continued sales.

 

[230RN]

87 years ago $200 was the price of a Model 1921 Thompson submachine gun which I suspect is the source of the NFA tax levy. ($400 was the price of a Ford automobile.)
But, back to sin taxes, the high tax was intended to discourage sales, not raise revenue from continued sales.

Well, I suspect the $200 was just a high PFA (Plucked From the Air) number. Someone told me once that the "justification" was to finance the new Bureaucracy, now called BATFEXYZ. My (again) wrinkled little brain tells me that was another prevarication, but I wasn't there.

Deanimator remarked,
"In general, any tax on firearms, other than a common sales tax, is overwhelmingly likely to have the same motivation as a poll tax, namely to impede the exercise of a fundamental right..."

Piggybacking on Deanimator's remark, I found it amusing to look at that $200 as if it were the sales tax on an actual item. Figuring an average sales tax nowadays at around 7% give or take, if that were the sales tax on a suppressor, its original price would be $2857.14 at the cash register.

That's a heck of a price for a threaded tube filled with washers.

Checking my arithmetic:
Item price $2857.14 X Sales tax at 7% = $199.99 sales tax. ✓

So what's a run of the mill suppressor actually going for nowadays, just ball park numbers?

Terry, 230RN

 

[Jim Watson]

87 years ago $200 was the price of a Model 1921 Thompson submachine gun which I suspect is the source of the NFA tax levy. ($400 was the price of a Ford automobile.)

But, back to sin taxes, the high tax was intended to discourage sales, not raise revenue from continued sales.

Right, I understand that the extortionate tax was put in because they had a legal opinion that a total ban would fail in court.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

The U.S. Attorney General in the 1930s Homer Cummings opined that an outright prohibition was not possible under the Second Amendment but exorbitant taxes might be.