No, I’m sorry but don’t agree with you completely. Let’s drop the whole “tax” thing. I was being snarky in an effort to express my annoyance with some attitudes about their right to buy ammo, and costs should never be increased. I don’t believe a tax to punish gun owners is appropriate. I do feel, however, that people who use things that are a public problem (which gun crime is in the US) should want to do something to remedy the problem. To say that THIS remedy is anything other than a financial inconvenience is stretching the definition of the 2nd to the point of abuse. You do NOT have the constitutional right to be able to afford a gun or ammo!! Millions of poor people live with this reality every day.
If the regulation can be put in place within the constitutional restrictions, and if the financial hardship isn’t substantially prohibitive to people currently buying ammo (meaning no gun owners would be able to buy ANY ammo), I don’t see any objection to the regulation at all. If the right itself isn’t infringed, and the regulation is put in place to protect the very people who are using that right (gun owners and non-gun owners alike would benefit from the regulation, theoretically), how could this be anything more than people complaining about the cost of their next outing at the range??? I know gun owners who have taken a pass on going to the range because they couldn’t afford it that week. What’s the difference? Your right to bear arms is not in question. Your ability to afford the ammo at that moment is all that’s at stake. A gun friend of mine is broke right now. He can’t afford ammo. That doesn’t change the fact that he has the right to bear arms.
I agree that placing a tax on church attendance would be wrong. However, I do not feel its the government’s reponsibility to provide your transportation to church if you can’t get there under your own power.
As already mentioned, several folks decided to vote beyond their pet issue because they were more concerned about the direction the country has taken with Republicans at the helm, than they were with the Democrats threat to their gun rights. Many I know felt that the Heller decision was the end all be all to protecting our rights. Unfortunately, as others have alluded to, we gun owners who pinched our noses and voted for the O are now being paid back by unprecedented attacks by every anti gun group in the country, including where ever your cite came from.
Democrats and supporters of the O broke their backs to woo the votes of the gun owners by trotting out Biden and others to claim that our double barrel shotguns were safe and he was not out to get those guns. O himself stated his support for the 2nd amendment even though his prior voting record showed little such support. So, suckers for the general welfare of the country that gun owners were, they put their concerns aside and voted for the D’s.
I don’t see this as a loss for the NRA, because traditionally, the R’s had done a far better job protecting gun owners rights. Sure there are exceptions to that but not many. As such, the NRA endorsed the candidates that they felt best defended gun rights and who also happened to be R’s and who also happened to royally screw the rest of the issues up so the voters kicked them out.
It is a mistake to think that people voted in candidates based upon their anti gun standing, and one that already played itself out in 1994 and 2000. I thought that the D’s already learned that lesson. I guess Sarah Brady and her ilk, missed that memo.
I really fail to understand how you construe the government NOT putting a price-increasing regulation in place as being the same thing as the government PROVIDING ammunition.
The issue Scumpup is ranting on is government increasing the cost of manufacture of ammo via regulations which impinges on his constitutional rights. Seems to me in order to avoid that the government could exclude ammo manufacturing from regulations that would increase their costs so Scumpup can have cheaper ammo.
Unfortunately such industry specific regulations seem hard to come by on the net. I found a reference that such things exist. Unfortunately that is just the table of contents and the company who has this document wants $599 for me to read it so not going to happen. But FWIW:
Eh? Extremists? Military weapons? Extremists with loads of military weapons need to be controlled? Heavy duty military automatic weapons? They need to be controlled? Rich weapon collectors that never use their guns in a crime need to be controlled?
You are quite a good example of the anti-gun culture that knows nothing about firearms but would like to take them away from law abiding gun owners.
Your afraid of something you no nothing about, but refuse to turn on the light.
These folks have no clue. Assault rifles are already heavily regulated as automatic weapons. Yet the same ammunition is used in guns that are not Assault rifles.
Really? Bullet coding. OK. Prove it. Just because they say so does not make it true. I really, really doubt that micro-laser etching will be readable after the bullet is fired. I’m doubtful, but open to it. I would really like to see demonstrations of this technology. It’s seems to me that legislation is being proposed before the technology is proven. This would make a defacto ban on all ammo that can’t meet technology that doesn’t exist. Looks like another end around to me. Sort of like Chicago. That worries me.
Bullet projectile. OK.
Ah. Now it’s Assault weapon instead of Assault rifle. No difference in ammo I suppose, but whoever proposed this legislation can’t even keep things straight. They don’t care. A gun is a gun to them.
I never said you had a right to afford it. And my main response was to your tax comments. However, that said, increasing the cost of a product through regulation, where there is a constitutional right involved, is not always permissible. I don’t know how much THIS remedy would cost. As I have said, if it is 0.5 cents per round, I don’t think it would be an issue. But an increase in costs imposed by regulation on a specific item, expecially when combined with legislative history, CAN rise to the level of a constitutional violation.
Nothing you are saying here goes against what I am saying. But it does impose an utterly ridiculous standard - that to be substantially prohibitive, no gun owners would have to be able to buy any ammo. Judging the application of a constitutional right by whether Warren Buffet can afford to do something is not justifiable.
Again, find a single instance where I have said this should be the case. You seemed to draw a line in the sand - banning not allowed, regulation involving increased costs not restricted. That just isn’t the case.
I’m not saying, Whack-a-Mole, that the firearms/ammo industry should be exempt from business regulations and taxation generally. I am saying that this particular piece of proposed legislation stinks of being another effort by the antis to bankrupt the industry out of existence. It strikes me as being very much like the civil suits the antis tried, with the same goal, in the 90’s. IOW, I object to people trying to achieve through dishonest legislation what they can’t achieve through proper channels i.e. ammending the Constitution.
You’re not changing the current arrangement, which is the fact that the government doesn’t pay for your weapons or ammo now, and never will. THe government already pays for polling places. They buy the little booths and the little pencils and all that good stuff. If they suddenly no longer provided polling places, you might have an argument. You might even have a legitimate reason to bear arms under the 2nd!!
Too bad anti-gun and anti-2nd aren’t interchangeable. If they were, you’d have an argument.
Nit pick. Traditionally, the R’s had done a better job protecting gun owners’ Second Amendment rights. Gun owners suffered the same degradation of their other rights during the last 8 years as the rest of the country.
We already do, dammit. Can somebody, anybody, who takes up a gun control position please read the Heller decision before jumping into these discussions? Is it any wonder that these always go to hell in a handbasket, one side of the discussion doesn’t even know the laws of this country and refuses to learn them!
Right…but neither does an increase in price knock most people out of the running. So…you’ll agree that increasing the cost of ammunition is not constitutionally prohibitive, only “kinda prohibitive for some weekend range rats who can’t afford as many cartridges as they used to?”
I too am unconvinced that the regulation in the OP is useful and reasonable. Seemed to me however that your discussion with Kalhoun was going down the line of any regulation increases costs which therefore impinges on your constitutional rights.
LOTS of regulations affect industry. Some I am sure you would agree with (i.e. child labor laws, safe storage of explosives and so on). So, clearly, regulation can be good and appropriate. With that as a basis it could be ok to mark ammo as in the OP IF (see the big “if”) it achieved a desirable goal (catch more criminals) and was cost effective (added cost was minimal).
Again, I am unconvinced the OP’s thing meets those standards but you can have the discussion that it can be ok without resorting to a “you are stomping on my rights” accusation.
Where on EARTH are you getting that from. You simply cannot say that unless you quantify “increase in price.” An increase in price of $8,000 per round - constitutionally prohibitive. An increase in price of $0.00001 per round - not constitutionally prohibitive.
And in true legislative intent analysis - having made lots of comments about this being designed to punish, and being a tax would weigh very heavily against you.
*"I did what I think was right, and for my trouble I am facing the diminution of my rights. I discounted the idea that Obama would trouble himself with this issue because he had more important things to do, but from the push I see here (see the Pit thread for examples) it is clear that there is an expectation that Obama will do something, and soon.
Thanks for nothing, Democrats. Me and people like me helped mightily to get Obama elected, and now you’re talking about showing us the back of your hand. Much obliged, it won’t be forgotten."*
To me that sounds like you are saying you made a mistake helping to elect Obama because he might restrict gun rights (which again is super far from certain anyway). You think you made a mistake because of this one particular right possibly getting restricted and although you are happy to see those other injustices rectified it is apparently still a mistake to get Obama in because of this one right.
Aw man, you were doing so good until this one. I hope you think that I am a reasonable person by my comments here. True, it is not difficult to tell which side of the issues I stand upon, but I am who I am after all. I own the military weapons that you mention here and am no threat to you or anyone else. I do not need to be controlled and it fucking pisses me off to be spoken of as though I do. I am guessing that the breakdown lies in what you and I deem to be reasonable. I know you are new here, but you need to realize that the “heavy duty military style weapons” are legal and are used in less than 1% of all crimes that use guns. They are not an issue. Being a reasonable person, I would be happy to discuss this matter further but it really deserves its own thread.
And your position, in my opinion is not reasonable. So there you go.
Regulation put in place with the sole (ulterior) motive of increasing costs and reducing supplies of ammo does impinge on my rights.
OSHA regulations, Labor regulations, and other such laws that apply to industry in general aren’t put in place with the sole goal of driving product prices up and reducing product supplies.
I object to regulations that are put in place primarily to punish me for exercising my rights.
I didn’t make a mistake voting for him, but if he ignores the fact that gun owners voted their consciences and helped to get him elected and passes gun control laws anyway, he will pay a considerable price for doing so, just like Clinton did in 1994.
Am I not allowed to be upset about the potential abrogation of my rights on the issue I have the most concern over? Were I a single-issue voter (which I am not) this would be it.
For the sake of argument assume ammo marking as proposed in the OP cost $0.005/bullet and increased capture of criminals using a firearm by 10%. Is that worth it?
That takes care of my objection to the punitive costs aspect, yes.
There remains, however, the issues of things like importation of surplus ammo, possession of unmarked ammo pre-dating the law, and other things.
I don’t object just to the serializing ammunition, though. It’s the other things that trouble me. Numbers on bullets and casings are a non-issue for me, in and of themselves.