And yet..

[X_Digger]

Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue -- a special tax on newsprint and ink was ruled unconstitutional infringement of the first amendment.

[safeinOhio]

1. That was a state court case

read Article 1 section 8 again. A federal tax must be uniform across the states.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Teen-smoking-stats-at-record-low/tabid/368/articleID/166056/Default.aspx?ArticleID=16605

The price of a pack of cigarettes in New Zeland has risen to $12/pack and teenage smoking has gone from 29% down to 11% in ten years. You don't want to see violent gun crime to go down like that? While you have argued that bans don't work, I think there is proof that taxes do. Econ 101, as cost go up, demand goes down. The price of newspapers has risen a bunch over the last decade and paper sales have gone down too.

[X_Digger]

2. BZZT! SCOTUS case

Justices for the Court

Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Warren E. Burger, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor (writing for the Court), Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White


http://law.jrank.org/pages/12734/Minneapolis-Star-v-Minnesota-Commissioner-Revenue.html#ixzz0ythKIJzN

The price of a pack of cigarettes in New Zeland has risen to $12/pack and teenage smoking has gone from 29% down to 11% in ten years. You don't want to see violent gun crime to go down like that? While you have argued that bans don't work, I think there is proof that taxes do. Econ 101, as cost go up, demand goes down. The price of newspapers has risen a bunch over the last decade and paper sales have gone down too.

I'm trying not to upchuck my dinner. That you'd be willing, nay eager, to tax a constitutionally protected right in an attempt to curtail it for everyone, just on the hope that it also curtails illegal use of those same tools.. just sickens me.

How very classist / elitist of you. Poor people? Fuck 'em, they shouldn't be poor. If you don't have enough money to meet the sin tax for the right of self-defense, well then, you shouldn't be poor, now should you!?!?

Disgusting.

[friendly_iconoclast]

5. It's Royalist gun control- "Only the good people should have legal guns"

And I would note that your interlocutor has carefully avoided pointing out two other aspects of his proposed tax:

1. It would be regressive.

The better-off could afford what they want, while those people would be limited in what they could afford for self-defense.

And since there is no demonstrable link on the number of firearms someone owns and their likelihood in doing something criminal

(if you are law-abiding while owning one gun, chances are you'd still be law abiding if you owned several dozen- as many collectors

do), this is purely a class-based attempt to disarm the working poor no matter the fine words it comes wrapped in.

and

2. It would be racist, as unfortunately in this country, skin color is a rough guide to income levels.

[Pavulon]

3. NO cigs are free. If you STEAL them. See smoking and splattering someones brains

are a different thing. A person willing to kill you is willing to steal a gun to facilitate that act.

Again you people refuse to address root cause. How bout you get back to me when your war on drug works (prohibition).

Your question about "wanting" to have crime to go down is insulting.

[Hoopla Phil]

4. SCOTUS Minneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue

http://aclu.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=444

One bit from the Courts decision: "A power to tax differentially, as opposed to a power to tax generally, gives a government a powerful weapon against the taxpayer selected. When the State imposes a generally applicable tax, there is little cause for concern. We need not fear that a government will destroy a selected group of taxpayers by burdensome taxation if it must impose the same burden on the rest of its constituency. When the State singles out the press, though, the political constraints that prevent a legislature from passing crippling taxes of general applicability are weakened, and the threat of burdensome taxes becomes acute. That threat can operate as effectively as a censor to check critical comment by the press, undercutting the basic assumption of our political system that the press will often serve as an important restraint on government..."