Quote:
Originally Posted by bcp  did you complain about the 2 dollars per pack tax on cigarettes?
thats .10 per smoke. |
No I didn't because it actually helped me keep from smoking again. However I never in memory endorsed the tax either.
Besides, smoking has no other purpose than to support a habit or to be used as a luxury. Ammo is for sport, feeding the family through hunting and self defence.
Smoking is unhealthy for a good portion of users. Ammunition is only harmful when used in a crime and accidental injuries are incredibly rare in comparison to the percentage of smokers that get sick.
Taxing cigarettes is intended to reduce smoking which often harms people. An ammunition tax is intended to reduce gun ownership which are often used to save people's lives or feed families when used for hunting.
They are not the same. It is like trying to tax beer just because. Beer is a food staple and in moderation is a health benefit. Ammunition is used legally maybe 99.9999% of the time and very rarely harms anyone when used for sport.
Now one might try to argue that people getting shot by criminals costs the health system money and gets people harmed just like smoking does, but as stated above where the number of murders and illegal shootings using ammunition compared to the number of legally used ammunition is the total opposite of the number of smokers getting sick compared to the overall number of smokers, there is also the fact that if there was no tobacco available smokers will not search for other means, but the murderer without a gun will still kill their victim or try to.
Making ammunition more expensive or virtually unavailable to the law abiding public will do nothing to curb crime, but a high cigarette tax will induce more people to quit. One has a logical reasoning (right or wrong), and the other doesn't.