Declining “Gun Violence” Tax Revenue In Seattle

Who’d a thunk it? Collections of the Seattle, WA “gun violence” (sic) tax are down again. Did any of the politicians on the Seattle City Council not figure out that buyers could vote with their feet and buy their ammo and guns outside the city limits?

I guess not given their original estimates of annual revenue was expected to be in the $300-500,000 range and actual 2017 collections were $92,220.74. We only know these real numbers thanks to the efforts of Dave Workman and the Second Amendment Foundation who had to sue to force the original disclosure of the 2016 numbers.

The Second Amendment Foundation released this statement regarding the tax collections:

BELLEVUE, WA. – Seattle’s “gun violence tax” revenue has once again failed to meet predictions, demonstrating once again that this was really a thinly disguised gun control scheme that was sold to the public as an effort to reduce so-called “gun violence,” the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

Figures released by the city under a Public Records Act request by the senior editor of SAF’s monthly magazine TheGunMag.com show the city collected $93,220.74 last year, a decline of nearly $10,000 from the amount collected in 2016 and far below the $300,000 to $500,000 revenue originally predicted by its proponents on the Seattle City Council when the tax was hastily passed almost three years ago.

“Once again,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “Seattle’s pie-in-the-sky gun tax revenue forecast has been proven to be a complete failure, essentially like other gun control fantasies. The revenue data only reinforces our claim in a lawsuit against the tax that this was a gun control scheme to drive firearm sales and gun stores out of the city, which it obviously did.

“It is important to remember that the city would never have released this data if it hadn’t been for our lawsuit in 2016 that forced Seattle to come clean and turn over the revenue figures,” he observed. “Otherwise, we believe the city would have continued to conceal this information because it is embarrassingly short of their prediction.”

“This was, and remains, a First Amendment issue,” said TheGunMag.com Senior Editor Dave Workman. “The public, and especially Seattle taxpayers, have a right to this information.”

“The city probably spent more on legal bills to keep the information confidential, and on manpower to comply with the Public Records Act and last year’s court order than it has so far collected,” Gottlieb estimated. “But this is a pretty good example of what gun control is all about. It always begins with grandiose promises, it invariably hurts the wrong people, it doesn’t stop criminals, and in the end those responsible stubbornly refuse to admit their real goal was to further erode gun rights. And the public winds up essentially worse off than they were before.”