Well, well. Looks like the NRA is getting a big lump of coal under its Christmas tree this year courtesy of a judge in Washington state. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving collection of gun nuts.
Tuesday, King County Superior Court Judge Palmer Robinson refused to grant a request by gun rights groups that would have put on hold Seattle’s “gun violence tax.”
In August, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed the so-called “gun tax” on all buyers and sellers of firearms and ammunition in the city. Revenue from the tax will be used to fund gun violence prevention programs and research beginning in January of 2016.
Another measure passed at the same time as the gun tax requires gun owners to immediately report cases of lost and stolen firearms to police.
There are several reasons the ammosexual extremists who slavishly pledge their allegiance to the NRA–and the NRA itself–are so opposed to the Seattle measure:
- It might mean that fewer guns are sold. Oh no!
- The money will be used to prevent gun violence, which the NRA loves to deny is a problem in the United States.
- If gun owners and dealers have to report lost or stolen guns, that will possibly prevent illegal straw sales or deals done in the back rooms or under the counters of gun shops.
- The NRA hates to lose because it happens so rarely. When it does, they tend to take it as a personal affront to their lobbying/bribery/intimidation efforts.
There is little doubt that the NRA will appeal this ruling all the way to the Supreme Court, as is their right under the legal system. But as gun deaths continue to skyrocket in the United States, and as more people get more fed up with the ease of buying a gun in this country, the reversals against Second Amendment absolutists will mount. And then the balance of sanity will perhaps be returned to this issue.
It’s Christmas. Am I not entitled to this one wish for a better future?
This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org.