It shows how far some states and localities are willing to go on gun control. | REUTERS New gun control strategy: Tax 'em

State and local officials are pushing a new way to expand gun control: taxes.

Gun owners in and around Chicago last week started paying a new $25 tax on every firearm they purchase. In California, a statehouse panel on April 15 will hear testimony on a nickel-per-bullet tax measure, and in New Jersey, lawmakers want to slap an additional 5 percent sales tax on guns and ammo.


The effort to impose new taxes on guns and bullets faces serious opposition from pro-gun groups, but it shows how far some states and localities are willing to go in this new frontier on gun control — especially as Washington struggles to find consensus even on the most scaled-back gun proposals being debated in Congress.

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The Senate is expected to consider gun control legislation this week. But Democrats are still trying to gain Republican support for a compromise bill that would allow background checks for gun sales. Many Republicans are balking at a provision to allow record keeping once the background checks are conducted, which they say could open the door to a national gun registry.

State lawmakers, meanwhile, are making the case for why taxes should be part of the debate.

“There are costs incurred as a result of gun violence which are borne by the general taxpayer — both social and economical,” California Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, who put forward a nickel ammo tax proposal in January, said in an interview. “There ought to be a cost … to those who want to buy firearms.”

Like other gun and ammo tax supporters, Dickinson is careful to portray his proposal, which would be earmarked for mental health programs, more as a way to pay for issues related to gun violence than as a plan to curb the ownership of weapons.

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“I’m not asking to take away people’s guns, I’m just saying that for an activity that is relatively dangerous, obviously, people who participate in that activity should pay the full costs of that activity,” said Maryland state Delegate Jon Cardin of Baltimore, who in January introduced legislation to tax bullets at 50 percent.

Gun and ammo tax supporters say those costs include law enforcement programs and paying for the medical care of gunshot victims.

The tax proposals began popping up on the radar or going into effect after the December 2012 Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting, and they are drawing strong opposition from gun rights advocates.

Opponents of the gun tax say 1 percent of prisoners locked up for gun-related crimes actually bought their weapons in gun shops — so the levies punish the wrong people.

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“This proposal … continues to penalize law-abiding gun owners for exercising their fundamental right to keep and bear arms,” the NRA Institute for Legislative Action said in a statement last year when the Chicago tax was being debated.

Gun Owners of America legislative counsel Michael Hammond called gun taxes “an effort to say the poor can’t own firearms because we’re going to impose a tax which they can’t afford to pay.”

He predicts such levies wouldn’t actually bring in much revenue since it would curb gun ownership and purchases.

Lawmakers in several states have also proposed requiring gun owners to buy liability insurance in another effort to bring new ideas to the debate.

Outside of Chicago, advocates of gun and ammo taxes are having trouble getting their proposals enacted.

On April 4, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed into law a sweeping gun control package banning assault weapons, requiring universal background checks and limiting magazines to 10 rounds while the Maryland Legislature last week cleared similar legislation that Gov. Martin O’Malley will sign soon.

Neither proposal included a firearms tax, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Connecticut state Sen. Beth Bye and Cardin both introduced a new 50 percent tax on bullets in the days following the Sandy Hook massacre — but neither made the cut in their states’ final gun control packages.

The idea has made its national debut, too — albeit on a small scale.

Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) introduced legislation in February to slap a nationwide 10 percent tax on handguns and allocate the funds to law enforcement buyback programs in hopes of getting guns off the streets.

“I don’t see this as the panacea or the cure for gun violence, but it allows law enforcement one more tool in their toolbox to combat gun violence,” Sánchez told POLITICO.

Pistols and revolvers are subject to a 10 percent federal excise tax while other firearms and bullets see an 11 percent tax, according to the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. But some supporters say those levies should be higher to pay for the societal costs of guns.

Ted Miller, an economist at the Maryland-based Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, found that shootings cost the U.S. economy $174 billion in 2010 if you include factors such as law enforcement, medical care, lost wages and pain and suffering.

That’s because communities often pick up the tab for law enforcement, correctional facilities and other types of criminal justice. They can also incur medical bills from treating gunshot victims’ wounds or even lose property tax revenue when housing prices decline in unsafe neighborhoods.

“Economists will argue a tax is justifiable if someone’s personal transaction has costs that affect people other than those involved in that transaction. … you can clearly make that case for guns,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, who supports the idea.

That was the justification Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle gave for the Chicago-area levy, noting that it costs about $52,000 to treat each gun victim in her area.

“This new policy will help us provide more resources to our vital public health system, which on a daily basis has to treat the victims of gun violence,” she said last week, estimating her proposal will bring in $600,000 every year.

Chicago’s murder rate skyrocketed last summer, one of the reasons the victims of shootings “make up more than 30 percent of the patients our trauma center sees,” Preckwinkle added.

In Nevada, state Assembly Majority Leader William Horne last month introduced a similar $25-per-gun and 2 cents-per-round tax. The revenue would fund mental health programs. In New Jersey, state lawmaker Connie Wagner would use revenue from a 5 percent sales tax on firearms to fund security cameras, panic buttons, emergency alarm systems and stronger bolts in public buildings such as schools.

“The money has to come from somewhere, and I know how stressed local budgets are, so my proposal was simply to finance security,” Wagner told POLITICO.

Dickinson, who said his proposal would raise $50 million annually for California, likens his proposal to a cigarette tax.

“I would analogize it in broad terms to increasing taxes on tobacco, and in increasing taxes on tobacco, certainly in California, we’ve seen a decline in tobacco use,” he said. “We’ve seen heightened interest in preventing people from beginning to smoke.”

Hammond of Gun Owners of America dismissed the notion that gun taxes will make communities safer.

“The way to curb violence in schools is to allow principals and teachers to at least theoretically defend their students,” he said. Adam Lanza, the Newtown, Conn., gunman, he said, “knew there would be no one there that would shoot back.”

Even supporters of gun taxes say the levies aren’t enough to curb gun violence.

Sánchez, for instance, isn’t convinced her tax by itself would limit gun purchases at all.

“I mean if it was a 50 percent tax, possibly, but this is not meant to make guns unaffordable for people who want to own them responsibly,” she said.

In that sense, she hopes her legislation will be more politically palatable to lawmakers leery of gun control measures than a ban on certain types of firearms or magazines.

Cardin in Maryland feels the same way.

“I don’t think [gun rights advocates] will be supportive; but if they had a choice between gun-safety measures like the governor’s proposal … or this, … I think they would choose this over that,” he said.

Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said the taxes “are not going to replace some of the major reforms we’re seeing, for example, inside the Senate now.”

Rather supporters, like all the lawmakers who discussed their gun and ammo levies with POLITICO, say taxes are one piece of the puzzle of addressing gun violence.

“It’s a big enough problem that in order for us to get a handle on it, we need to address it from a lot of different vantage points,” Webster said. “We have a long, long way to go to address the problem, so we can and should be thinking about a pretty broad range of things.”