In her ongoing effort to stack South Dakota’s electorate with tax dodgers and gun nuts, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is urging California gun makers and toters to move to South Dakota to get away from their state’s new tax on firearms and ammunition. Yet her posturing little press release suggests that South Dakota is missing a remarkable revenue opportunity by failing to follow California’s example of taxing guns and ammo:
South Dakota’s firearms industry has a total economic impact of $400 million. The state has the second-highest number of registered weapons per 100,000 residents of any state in the nation – this is over three times the nation average and seven times that of California. South Dakota’s concentration of employment in the firearms industry is also 77% higher than the national average and 177% higher than California’s [Governor Kristi Noem, press release, 2023.09.28].
The Firearm Industry Trade Association says California’s gun and ammo makers generate $5.99 billion in economic activity.
California will use its gun/ammo tax to pay for the externalities imposed by gun nuttery, like increased school security and violence prevention programs:
The law says the first $75m of that money must go to the California violence intervention and prevention grant program. The program has funded projects targeting young people in gangs, including sports programs, life coaching and tattoo removal.
The next $50m would go to the state department of education to boost security at public schools. That includes things like physical security improvements, safety assessments, after-school programs for at-risk students and mental and behavioral health services for students, teachers and other school employees [“California Doubles Taxes on Guns and Ammunition to Pay for School Security,” AP via Guardian, 2023.09.26].
California and South Dakota both rank below the national median gun death rate, but South Dakota’s gun death rate is 58% higher than California’s. Bang-bangs apparently create even more costly externalities in South Dakota:
Noem did not mention that South Dakota has a higher firearm mortality rate than California. In 2021, the most recent year of available data from the Centers for Disease Control, South Dakota had a firearm mortality rate of 14.3 out of 100,000 residents — or 128 deaths. California’s firearm death rate was 9 per 100,000 residents — 3,576 deaths.
Of the 240 violent deaths in South Dakota in 2020, nearly half were caused by firearms, according to the 2020 state Department of Health violent death report (the most recent report available). Of the 180 suicides that year — which accounted for 75% of the total violent deaths — nearly half were caused by firearms [Makenzie Huber, “Noem Invites California-Based Gun Manufacturers to SD to Escape New Taxes,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2023.09.28].
Noem is missing an opportunity to turn lead into gold. Instead of inviting people to come to South Dakota to avoid taxes, we could impose a nominal tax on guns and ammo, lower than California’s but still enough to make the people who play a role in creating social problems like violent death pay for the social costs of those problems. Heck, Noem could even keep her fingerprints off the tax and let counties impose, collect, and appropriate the tax to cover their burgeoning public safety costs.
Political posturing is cute, but Noem and her fellow Republican leaders should use economic development to address real fiscal and social problems.
It’s long past time to muster the political will to mandate a three year enrollment in military or police service at the age of eighteen and the civilian age of possession, operation and ownership of all firearms be limited to people 21 and older. Levy 100% excise taxes on the domestic sales of semi-automatic weapons then tag the revenue for Medicaid expansion so parents have the resources to address the devastating effects of Fox News on American youth.
Mass shootings are obviously bad, but guns are really good (tragic) suicide machines.
Just because people are killing themselves and others with guns, doesn’t mean there is a problem with guns?
It is very appropriate to tax substances/items that cause societal and health problems. Guns are a tool just like a vehicle and are not the cause of any problem. The largest root cause of many problems is the sacred cow, alcohol, not guns or cars.
Alcohol is cheap, readily available, and easy to procure. A good start would be adding $1 tax to 12 ounces of beer or 1 ounce of hard liquor. While this is still not enough to cover the cost to society of the problems directly caused by misuse of alcohol, it is a start.
Guns are not tbe problem.
Guns are a large part of the problem, but magats are the largest part of the problem. With their latest re-interpretation of the 2nd amendment they have given the green light to the use of guns as a problem solver of even the tiniesat disputes between people.
Dave, cars are made to transport people from one place to another SAFELY. Sometimes that fails and we hold the manufacturer responsible when the product is unsafe. What is the purpose of guns? I also reject your wattaboutism for alcohol; let’s tax the hell out of BOTH!
O, guns are not the cause of any problem. Guns are tools, like a hammer or a car. Private ownership of guns was the means by which America became free. Now America is in danger of falling without a shot being fired.
Learning history at age 12, I did not understand how or why people would willingly enter those boxcars.. Now at age 65, we are living how tbat was accomplished.
Private ownership of guns was how we became free under the regulation of a well-armed militia. That need for national defense and protection ended with the Civil War when the US issued arms to its militia. In fact, private gun ownership is what armed out enemy in that conflict. No nation that controlled domestic individual gun ownership — not even radically controlled it — has been invaded by an individually well-armed force. There is NO threat for America to fall undefended (see our national defense budget). Furthermore it is the unregulated over-armed private militias that pose the threat to US security thanks to the modern interpretation of the Second Amendment. America will fall to the Second Amendment — not be saved by it.
But you dodge my question: what is the purpose of guns? Your discussion points to the obvious answer — they are designed to kill people. Why do conservatives have such a hard time acknowledging the evidence that the presence of guns is directly proportional to UNINTENDED and UNWANTED deaths by guns. Guns in a household are more likely to kill a member of the household than thwart a home invasion. But again, conservatives not only turn a blind eye to the data, they forbid even the collection of that data.
O, I suppose everyone here with a little age has had someone close to them killed by a gun. I sure have. War, suicides, and a mass shooting.
What is the purpose of guns? That varies with any individual.
If you don’t like guns or are afraid to own one, don’t have any. As for me and many others, we will continue to follow the Constitution and exercise our rights.
Dave, I only wish “don’t own one or don’t have any” was enough to remove guns from my concern. It’s those OTHER people’s guns that have been doing all the damage. Nowhere is safe BECAUSE of the proliferation of profit demanded by gun manufacturers and sold to gullible conservatives. I only wish I had the option to opt out of the per valiance go gun violence. Again the purpose does NOT vary with the individual: guns are made to kill.
Or let me frame it this way, Dave: in 2021, 48,830 people in the US were killed by guns. How many of them were “supposed” to be? How many correct applications of your tool offset this number?
Guns are not a problem?
If there were no guns there would be no gun deaths.
Keep the “gun huggers” up there in your own space, flatlanders, if that’s what makes you “feel” safe. We’ll do what we choose to do to help us “feel” safe. It’s not a “long barrel” contest. Gun huggers DO tend to be those boys who weren’t good in sports, though.
– Two new gun laws that are set to go into effect in Colorado on Sunday will institute a three-day waiting period for purchases and make it easier for victims and their families to sue gun manufacturers and dealers.
The laws, passed by the legislature in April, were among several gun-violence prevention measures signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis this year. Lawmakers also passed a bill expanding the state’s red-flag law, which has already taken effect, plus a fourth measure that generally will require a person to be 21 or older to buy a gun. A federal judge has temporarily blocked that minimum age law amid an ongoing legal challenge. – DenverPost
The large and active sub culture of middle age white men owning high powered, combat style automatic rifles and sharing right wing political viewpoints aligned with Donald Trump attracts people with a screw loose upstairs who find refuge and kinship by joining loose affiliations with others who have similar interests. This substantial number of folks, who were largely uninvolved in politics, especially Party Politics until 10 years ago is potentially dangerous to us all on a personal level. They are obsessive and irrational. They are a threat to our democratic system.
It’s impossible to know whether she believes a single word she mouths or just reads the script to the coached cadence. Who knows? With those lips Fox must be wet with the chance to buy her drinks and punch her ticket to paradise.