Quote Originally Posted by cmailliard View Post
While I agree that this tax is stupid as there already is a fee for background checks, the argument used here is just stupid.

If time are tough you probably should not be buying guns. If you can afford to buy a $500 Glock, $1000 AR-15, or $500 shotgun you can AFFORD to pay this $10.50 tax.

Like I said the tax is a stupid idea, just don't make it about affordability.
When you add up all of the extra crap Ritter has saddled us with, like the extra fees we pay with our vehicle registrations, it quickly becomes about affordability. It doesn't take very long to become expensive when you start adding it up.
Everyone needs their vehicles, so whether we like it or not we pay his damn fee. With this one, the only people who care are those of us who get hit with it even though many pay for the checks already, even though the folks who wanted the whole checks system are the same ones who want us to pay for it now. As soon as they get us paying the $10.50, they'll find some reason to jack it up, as much and often as they can. It can easily be turned into a way to regulate gun purchases, much the way they did with the machine gun tax when it was enacted ($200 was a LOT then).
So they want us to pay for the checks that they made mandatory. Why do we not hear about prosecutions of people who are caught trying to illegally buy guns? Has anyone heard of how many legitimate purchase denials there are in a month? A year? How many of those are prosecuted? How many are convicted? They just committed a felony, yet we hear NOTHING. Could it be that the results of this system that they now want US to pay for are IGNORED because the real reason for its existence was to put yet another chink in legitimate gun ownership? Or could it be that the system doesn't produce results? Because I don't know about you guys, but I can count on one hand the number of prosecutions I've heard about from this system. And frankly, it pisses me the hell off that apparently this sort of felony is ignored while the ATF spends time and effort going after legitimate dealers and harassing them. Why aren't the Brady bunch and all of their ilk crowing about the number of prosecutions from people caught trying to illegally buy guns? They talk about how many purchases are prevented, but never about how many are ultimately reversed on appeal (big surprise there, eh?) or how many people are convicted based on their attempt to purchase illegally. And with the 4473, THEY HAVE PROOF ON PAPER! It would appear to me that, much like the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm, some Felonies are more equal than others.

(Sorry, wasn't trying to hijack the thread. Just makes me mad!)