(GunReports.com) — Wednesday’s partial retreat by Cook County, Ill., board President Toni Preckwinkle on her proposed “violence tax” is a good start, but the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said the entire idea should be scrapped.
CCRKBA panned the proposal more than a week ago, when Preckwinkle announced she was mulling a 5-cent tax on every cartridge and a $25 tax on firearms to help close a budget gap. Today she backed off on the “bullet tax” but still wants the tax on firearms adopted.
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb today was delighted with the partial victory, but said a “full retreat from this proposed gun ownership penalty is necessary.”
“Gun owners have won a partial victory,” Gottlieb observed, “but Preckwinkle is still trying to make them shoulder more than their fair share with this tax proposal. Face it, illegally-armed criminals are not going to pay any tax, so waging class warfare against legal firearms owners is way off target, and we brought attention to it.
“Besides,” he continued, “it’s not gun owners but government that got Cook County into the budget mess. How does a county government come up short by an estimated $3 billion, anyway?
Newspaper reports said the county budget could run in the red next year because of the costs of public health clinics, two hospitals and the criminal justice system.
“What Preckwinkle wants is to penalize gun owners for exercising a constitutionally-protected civil right,” Gottlieb stated. “The penalty should be on Preckwinkle and her political allies for spending the county that far into the red.
