Buy a gun in Los Angeles, pay an extra fee?

Two Los Angeles lawmakers want to explore taxing handguns and ammunition sales in a bid to reduce gun violence.

Los Angeles City Councilmen Paul Koretz and Paul Krekorian last week submitted a motion asking for a report on the proposal, which Koretz estimates could bring about $1 million a year.

Koretz compared the proposed tax with a cigarette tax or pollution mitigation fee.

“If you want to have a gun, you can have one, but you have to pay an extra tax that pays for some of the societal costs of guns,” Koretz said, defining “costs” as suicides and mass shootings.

The council members’ motion comes two months after Seattle passed a law adding a $25 tax to gun sales and 2- to 5-cent tax to ammunition. The fee comes on top of Seattle’s 9.6 percent sales tax.

The Seattle law is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1 but faces a legal challenge from the National Rifle Association and two major gun groups who contend local municipalities can’t create their own firearms regulations.

According to the NRA, the only other city with an individual tax on gun sales is Chicago. That city’s law was passed in 2012, when Cook County, Ill., passed a gun tax to raise money for taxpayer-funded hospital costs involved with treating gun-related incidents and court costs related to gun violence.

According to a study released by the nonprofit Urban Institute, California hospitals spent about $87 million on firearm assault injury costs in 2010, with the public shouldering 65 percent of those expenses.

Fourteen stores sell guns or ammunition in the city of Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Gun Unit, which tracks firearms. Half of those retailers are Big 5 Sporting Goods stores. A message left at Big 5’s corporate headquarters wasn’t returned.

Gun buyers already pay an existing 10 percent to 11 percent federal tax on weapons, per a 1937 law that redistributes the money to wildlife conservation and shooting facilities.

Krekorian cited the regular occurrence of mass shootings in the U.S. in explaining his support for a possible tax.

“Gun violence is a national epidemic, and I think lawmakers at every level have an obligation to look for ways to raise awareness about the issue and find reasonable ways to help prevent it,” Krekorian said.

NRA spokesman Lars Dalseide pointed to the recent rising crime rates in Chicago and suggested a tax doesn’t deter gun violence.

“The problem most gun control advocates don’t seem to grasp is that criminals don’t legally purchase firearms,” Dalseide wrote in an email. “That means it’s the law-abiding gun owner who buys a target pistol, hunting rifle or firearm for self defense who ends up shouldering the cost incurred by the illegal activity of muggers, carjackers and home invaders.”

Both Krekorian and Koretz backed several gun control measures during their respective time in the state Assembly.

In August, the Los Angeles City Council, led by Krekorian, backed a law requiring local handgun owners to safely lock up their weapons or face misdemeanor charges.

And in July, the council banned the possession of large-capacity gun magazines in the city of Los Angeles.