{"id":651,"date":"2017-08-17T12:16:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T12:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/2017\/08\/17\/gun-violence-tax-receipts-prove-people\/"},"modified":"2019-08-16T18:27:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T18:27:59","slug":"gun-violence-tax-receipts-prove-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/?p=651","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Gun Violence&#8221; Tax Receipts Prove People Vote With Their Feet"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:8294,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.thegunmag.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260309211107\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.thegunmag.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-18 04:37:57&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-24 16:27:29&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-24 16:27:29&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:8295,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.seattlepi.com\\\/local\\\/article\\\/Seattle-s-gun-tax-falls-well-short-of-forecast-11821674.php&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20220525045705\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.seattlepi.com\\\/local\\\/article\\\/Seattle-s-gun-tax-falls-well-short-of-forecast-11821674.php&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-18 04:37:58&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-24 16:27:28&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-24 16:27:28&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:8296,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com\\\/2014\\\/12\\\/in-seattle-rich-vote-for-gun-control.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20251211142115\\\/https:\\\/\\\/onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com\\\/2014\\\/12\\\/in-seattle-rich-vote-for-gun-control.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-18 04:38:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-18 04:38:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>\nWhen the City of Seattle city council passed their &#8220;gun violence&#8221; (sic) tax in 2015 the proponent of the measure, Councilman Tim Burgess, projected tax revenues from it to be between $300,000 and $500,000 annually. Opponents of the measure suggested at the time that gun buyers would just avoid the $25 tax on firearms by purchasing their firearms outside the city limits. As we suspected all along the opponents were correct.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to a lawsuit originally brought by Dave Workman, senior editor of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thegunmag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TheGunMag<\/a>, Seattle was forced to divulge the real collection numbers. The real numbers differ from those projected by Councilman Burgess.<\/p>\n<p>The real number is $103,766.22. Of that amount, $86,410 comes from Sodo&#8217;s Outdoor Emporium whose owner has indicated that he might just shift his gun sales entirely to his other store outside of Seattle.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.seattlepi.com\/local\/article\/Seattle-s-gun-tax-falls-well-short-of-forecast-11821674.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer<\/a>, Councilman Burgess isn&#8217;t fazed by the numbers.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>&#8220;I&#8217;m neither disappointed or pleased,&#8221; he said Tuesday, adding that he knew the $300,ooo to $500,000 was just a guess. &#8220;It is what it is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The tax charges $25 for every firearm sold in the city and 5 cents for every round of ammunition of .22 caliber or greater.<\/p>\n<p>Harborview&#8217;s take from the tax was always supposed to be about $130,000. The 2016 tax revenue falls short of that, but while the tax was contested in courts, the city allocated $275,000 from the general fund toward the study.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Money generated by the &#8220;gun violence&#8221; (sic) tax was supposed to go to fund &#8220;gun violence&#8221; (sic) research at Harborview Medical Center.<\/p>\n<p>Burgess goes on to say about the tax collections:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>Burgess defended the tax as a means of making gun sellers part of the solution to the effects of gun violence.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The fundamental principle behind the tax is that the firearms industry should contribute to mitigating the harms caused by their products,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That remains the primary motivation for the tax. That&#8217;s what we set out to do, that&#8217;s what we passed and that&#8217;s what the state Supreme Court has validated.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The law was not written to specify where the tax revenue would go, but it was always intended to go toward programs like Harborview&#8217;s, Burgess explained. So if the city had collected an amount beyond the agreed-upon $130,000, the excess would have gone to other education and public safety causes, he said.<\/p>\n<p>But should the tax continue to generate less than $130,000 or progressively shrink, &#8220;then I&#8217;m sure my colleagues would continue to fund the program with other sources,&#8221; Burgess said.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I guess in liberal paradises like Seattle the voters don&#8217;t really care if their councilmen and women take a cavalier attitude towards taxes. That is just a price to pay to live in a city where <a href=\"http:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.blogspot.com\/2014\/12\/in-seattle-rich-vote-for-gun-control.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the wealthy hire off-duty cops to give them extra protection<\/a> from the criminal class.<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the City of Seattle city council passed their &#8220;gun violence&#8221; (sic) tax in 2015 the proponent of the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1105,1106,1479],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-city-of-seattle","tag-gun-violence-tax","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11142,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/11142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}