Tax credit for gun safes
Looks like both pro- and anti-gun senators have signed off on a bill that lets people take a 25% tax credit if they buy a gun safe. The facts are stupidly wrong:
In the United States, approximately 50-percent of all households contain a firearm. Statistics have shown that an improperly stored firearm kills one child every three hours in the United States, making it the second leading cause of deaths among children. A loaded, accessible firearm in a residential home contributed to 55-percent of all suicides, and nearly one-third of all violent crime in the U.S. is committed with a gun stolen from the homes of law-abiding citizens.
As they say at KABA:
One death every three hours is 2920 per year. The only way you can get anywhere near this number is by including every firearm related death, including homicide and suicide, and count as ‘children’ anyone 19 years old and younger.
Additionally, a safe will not make up for parental negligence which is how kids get killed by A loaded, accessible firearm in a residential home. And access to guns doesn’t lead to more suicides. I’m all for the tax credit but the bill is kind of silly.
Maybe we could get them to add a rider to repeal the 1986 Hughes Amendment?
August 8th, 2005 at 11:57 am
I’d say buyer beware.
The Natinal Gun Safe Coalition is run out of the office of a former Kennedy staffer – Caren Turner.
http://lobbylinx.com/
Ariella Herman , the media contact on the press release, is an attorney and her only employee. She used to work at Morgan Lews Bockius, a big liberal Philly firm.
August 8th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
I suspect that with a law passed that hints that it is a good idea to have a safe, the gun banning politicians figure it will be a much shorter step to pass another law to make them mandatory.
August 8th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Well, if a bad guy was carrying a gun, his gun wasn’t “properly stored,” was it?
August 8th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
Ummm OK, think hard. Why do the federal overlords give you a tax break on your safety deposit box? Because in the early days before the laws that made your bank spy on you for uncle sam, this was an easy way to know the existence of said box for a possible future audit. The standard deduction for children is the same thing, although now, you need to mark your kiddies at birth with the socialist insecurity number. I would imagine this token deduction is in the same category.
I’m calling for a $400 dollar deduction on anyone’s taxes if they can shoot 3 MOA at 100 yards with a privately owned, unregistered long arm and their own supplied ammo. Best homeland defense money we would ever spend.
August 8th, 2005 at 9:24 pm
At any rate, my $400 tax idea would make a killer amendment to the bill. Either they pass it, or it gets saddled with amendment and dies in committee.