Let's compare the price of engaging in certain activities across South Dakota.
The Madison City Commission last night approved a quintupling of licensing fees. Plumbers, sidewalk builders, and electricians must now pay the City of Madison $100 to engage in their vital and noble professions. Reporter Sue Bergheim says those license fees had been $20 since the 1960s.
The Lawrence County Commission is considering employing a building inspector. Apparently there has been a rash of people's decks falling off. The county will pay for the new position by charging contractors a $75 licensing fee.
Plumbers, sidewalk builders, electricians, and homebuilders do a lot of important work. We justify erecting this fiscal barrier to their doing this work with concerns that they might do that work incorrectly.
Persons carrying concealed weapons contend they promote social welfare. Persons with guns in the britches can also make serious mischief. We charge those folks $10 every four years for the privilege of sneaking a gun around. Wear that gun on your hip, and the state won't charge you a thing or require a license.
Priorities, anyone?
Some teachers with guns in their britches could have saved 26 lives. The permits thould be free, or better yet, not required.
Cory, I'm afraid I'm disappointed in your logic, and I'm fast losing respect for you for grasping at tenuous connections. Are there rational & sound policy responses to what has been happening? You bet. This definitely isn't one of them.
1) Licensing fees are charged to offset the expense of hiring an inspector, who then inspects the work of a professional in order to control transactions between professionals & their customers.
2) The fee to apply for a conceal carry permit is to offset the administrative cost for the time it takes to issue said permit & to run the background check. There is no financial transaction taking place between customer and professional as there is between the plumber and the owner of a clogged toilet.
If we're proposing deputizing everyone with a conceal carry permit and paying them for their service (I don't think anyone's proposing that), then charging a licensing fee makes sense. So does mandatory safety courses and a whole host of other things.
3) South Dakota experienced 5 homicides in 2011 in which a firearm was involved (down 38% from 2010). The per 100k rate for murder in SD for 2011 was 0.68 compared to the US average of 2.75. In 2010 it was 0.98 compared to 2.84.
3a) South Dakota Robberies in 2011 were 4.91 per 100,000, compared to 39.25 per 100,000 for the US as a whole. Aggravated assaults were 20.6 vs 43.77 per 100k.
Our violent crime (with and without firearms involved) is significantly below the US average. What significant impetus requires South Dakota communities to effect such a drastic policy change?
4) How would those fees be used? What is the cost we're offsetting?Would you pump them into police force funds? Put them away for relief to families of gun violence?
5) How is charging the law abiding citizen more money (the one who actually took the time to get a conceal carry permit) going to do anything to impact the person who carries a weapon concealed without a permit? A higher fee isn't going to reduce gun crime... especially not by those who live outside the law anyway.
6) I contend higher fees will discourage conceal carry and promote open carry (or increase illegal concealment). I don't see how that will increase safety one iota.
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Fees to abate the cost of "potential mischief" is an irrational smokescreen. We all pay taxes to support public safety. Those who cause mischief pay a debt to society in fines, court costs, restitution, & prison time. It is unjust to single out and penalize those who have not yet caused mischief - and have no intent of ever doing so - for the actions of those who have.
I want you to think long and hard about that.
Crime statistics tell us more young black & latino men are committing crimes. In 2008, the offending rate for blacks (24.7 offenders per 100,000) was 7 times higher than the rate for whites (3.4 offenders per 100,000). Blacks accounted for nearly 57% of all gun homicides in 2008.
Should we have a fee for being young & black in our nation, because their demographic is more likely to commit a crime?
How heinous a thought!
From Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review:
"The literature on right-to-carry laws summarized in this chapter has obtained conflicting estimates of their effects on crime ... No link between right-to-carry laws and changes in crime is apparent in the raw data, even in the initial sample; it is only once numerous covariates are included that the negative results in the early data emerge. While the trend models show a reduction in the crime growth rate following the adoption of right-to-carry laws, these trend reductions occur long after law adoption, casting serious doubt on the proposition that the trend models estimated in the literature reflect effects of the law change. Finally, some of the point estimates are imprecise. Thus, the committee concludes that with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates."
While it's tough to parse out of the data whether conceal-carry laws decrease gun crimes (as the NRA claims), it's more specious to argue that conceal-carry laws are responsible for MORE gun crimes - when gun crimes have been declining consistently since the 90s.
Gun carrying and hammer carrying should both be free. Gun wielding and hammer wielding should both be free. If you are paid to do a job with any tool then a license might be in order, but not if you're just walkin' around town with your ball peen.
Wayne:
(6) Why not encourage open carry? Wouldn't folks having their guns out in the open increase the deterrent effect?
(5) Let's call it a tax on undermining faith in the social contract.
(4) Yup, Pay for training. Create a gun violence victims fund.
(3) Then maybe we all should chill the heck out. School is still the safest place in the world for your kids. Violent crime is going down. Why do so many people think they need to secretly carry guns around?
(2) Concealed weapons carriers are essentially deputizing themselves, declaring they can be trusted to use guns wisely wherever and whenever they choose. (Again, see the quote LK offers in the link in #5.) You want to play deputy without going to the academy and putting in the time to become a real police officer? Fine. Pay up.
Cory has a valid point. It is conservative economics that folks should largely pay their own way. That is why over 70 years ago hunters and fishermen demanded and achieved taxing themselves with 11+% excise taxes to fund wildlife and fisheries projects. ATV fiends should likewise pony up an 11+% excise tax to pay for their damage to America's public lands. Drinkers and gamblers should likewise pay for the carnage they visit on the public. "Target shooters" using Bushmasters, Glocks, and the like - nonhunting weapons must be forced to pay for the carnage their ilk visits on America. It's behavior, not status - if one participates in the behavior then one ought to pay up for it's anti-social consequences.
The abject failure of "Troops to Teachers" is profound. The only thing the program, if we charitably call it that, did was to give virtually no benefit to "troops" for their prior training, teaching, and leadership experience - but rather forced them through the same rigmarole as civilian teachers.
I don't like the option. It has many pitfalls - an ill teacher, a kid getting a hold of the gun, etc.; yet, where schools are not next door to a police station, or do not have an armed officer, the option of training and arming select staff has merit as one of the better of bad options - that should be attractive in rural communities. 4 minutes or less is not enough time for outsiders like police to react. It is disgusting we have to imprison students in their schools. The least we can do is have a few designated folks to protect them - though the record also shows that by virtue of carrying a firearm when the police show up - they are highly likely to be shot by police who inject themselves into an ill-defined, emotional, hostile situation. There are only bad options - with some being worse.
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/18/167533823/amid-calls-for-gun-control-some-push-for-weapons-at-school
And no, we don't want the French teacher armed, unless s/he's trained like the French Foreign Legion and not like Napoleon's corporal.
Wayne, would you accept the guns-alcohol analogy John makes?
Divesting from the gun lobby:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324407504578186523224794006.html
An interesting question Cory. We tax alcohol & tobacco because of the harm they do to society in order to offset the cost.
I understand the argument for those kinds of fees/taxes.
But look at the size of the harm caused.
Alcohol was responsible for about 47,000 deaths in 2008. The CDC tells us one in every five deaths is attributable to smoking.
If we're talking risk to society, firearms don't even come close to the risk factors of alcohol & tobacco. We should be taxing McDonald's for the harm they do to our waistline.
We all pay the collective costs needed to support our public safety forces. When our public safety system collects more, it's from the ones who actually do the crime - speeding tickets, court fees, restitution costs, etc. We don't charge people extra because they ~might~ do something.
Moreover, we have a criminal code which punishes those who ~do~ stray from our social contract and cause harm.
You're proposing taxing 45% of households based on what a tiny fraction of offenders do. That's absurd.
But we shouldn't even be talking about taxing risks to society. You didn't seem to want to address the racial profiling problem your logic engenders. If you're willing and convinced it's a good idea to charge licensing fees and other costs to safeguard against harms caused by firearms, surely it's a good idea to target the people who actually perpetrate the crimes.
Cory: "(3) Then maybe we all should chill the heck out. School is still the safest place in the world for your kids. Violent crime is going down. Why do so many people think they need to secretly carry guns around?"
I agree. I don't think allowing teachers to carry firearms in schools will make our world a safer place. Police cannot be everywhere, and it makes sense to allow people the tools to defend themselves, but I don't feel the need to conceal carry in South Dakota. I want the permit just so I don't have to worry about transporting firearms when I go hunting.
All this bruhaha you're stirring is warrantless, Cory. I assume you don't hunt, let alone own a firearm. That's your prerogative... but it's also clear you're not trying very hard to wear the shoes of those who enjoy, respect, and own firearms without any intent of doing ill.
If there are changes we as a society need to make regarding firearms ownership, they need to be rational & well-thought out in order to achieve our desired end without causing undue hardship. We shouldn't restrict fundamental rights willy nilly - we need to have good justification, and proof that those regulations will better society as a whole.
Will our society be better without modern looking weapons? I doubt it.
Will our society be better without 30-round magazines? Quite possibly.
Will our society be better if we tax gun owners for things they haven't done? No.
Huh, for some reason it didn't take my other post re: John's analogy.
I understand the mentality for taxing things which do a harm to our society. But if we look at the order of magnitude, there's no comparison.
Gun violence claims less than 10k lives. Guns are tied to 30k deaths annually, roughly. A majority of those 30k deaths (17 - 20k) are suicides, highlighting a need for a major focus on how we address mental illness.
Alcohol claims between 40 - 70k lives a year, and shortens lifespans by about 30 years. Tobacco accounts for one in every 5 deaths in America, or 433k per year.
If we're talking orders of magnitude, why should we focus on 0.4% of deaths in the US (10k gun homicides / 2.4 million US deaths)? Why should we charge people for ills they might commit (when the background check says they haven't been a risk in the past!)?
Again, if you're proposing taxing a person for mischief he might make, you're running into the heinous logic that says we ought to tax demographics based on their ills. Remember, blacks are 7 times more likely to commit homicide with a firearm than whites.
I'd prefer we not take our society there.
Should we provide firearm safety courses alongside drivers ed? I think that's a smashing idea. Should we require it for ownership? I'm not so sure. We don't require driver's ed or motorcycle safety courses before you can drive/ride. We do require you to take & pass a test before you get the privilege of using our state-funded transportation system.
We don't make people take tests before they exercise their right to vote.
We don't make people take tests before they spout off on the internet.
The key to making good policy is to find ways that make people want to utilize it. I like the gun safety course Utah has in place before you can conceal carry. I wish more states would adopt it. So many states acknowledge the value of the Utah course, they have allowed reciprocity with Utah's CCP.
But again, despite a marked increase in conceal-carry permits, we haven't seen a reversal in gun crimes. Everything is declining - we're the safest today as we've been my entire life - yours too, Cory.
Let's focus on making sure we keep violent & mentally ill folks away from firearms. Let's focus on closing the gun show loop hole. Let's focus on creating good education for safe gun operation & storage.
Firearm homocides in U.S. in 2009: 11,493, 68% of all homicides. Firearm suicides in 2009: 18,375, 50% of all suicides. That's 39,000 deaths, not too far below alcohol-related deaths.