Gun control advocates keep saying that making it harder to legally buy guns will reduce violent crime. They say it again and again and again. It’s like they took a page from the Adolf Hitler playbook who was reported to have said that if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it.
Well, Seattle bought the lie hook, line, and sinker. They passed a “gun violence” tax in 2015 on sales of guns and ammunition in Seattle city limits. Mike Miller writes,
Proponents of the law, which went into effect on January 1, 2016, argued that neither would happen and the law would generate from $300,000 to $500,000 on an annual basis, which, in 2016, was earmarked to “fund a study of gunshot victims, including medical and behavioral interventions.”
Now, some people will be surprised what happened since the tax was put into effect. Gun stores began to close and gun and ammunition sales are down in Seattle, so gun control advocates got that out of this tax (which is, presumably, what they wanted). Of course, they probably think that reducing gun and ammunition sales will reduce violence.
They were wrong. Miller again writes,
According to the Seattle Police Department, the number of gun shootings with injuries is up 54 percent and gun deaths have doubled during the first five months of 2017, as compared to the same period before the law went into effect. […]
Dave Workman, senior editor of GunMag, rhetorically asked “how much data do you need?”, adding “The data says the law has failed to prevent what they promised it would prevent.”
City officials wouldn’t reveal the amount of revenue generated by the law in 2016, saying only that it was “under $200,000.”
So, the next time that you hear some gun grabber babble on about how reducing legal gun sales or reducing legal ammunition sales will reduce violence, just point them to the facts of the Seattle “experiment.” Gun sales and ammunition sales reduce violence, and that is the truth.