Excise Tax On Gun Owners?

I would like to thank E Schwartz for this idea, in his/her response to my pervious entry 30,000 Gun Deaths per year. The idea in the comment is that with 10,000 gun homicides/year at cost of $1,000,000 per death, it makes sense to impose an excise tax of $10B/year on guy owners.
Well. I LIKE THE IDEA. I like it so much that I think its application should be significantly expanded.

Expansion#1: A 1993 nationwide concluded that  162,000 incidents in which a person would have been killed if not used a gun for self defense occured per year.” This figure excludes all “military service, police work, or work as a security guard.”[12].”  Now, I will ignore the US population growth since 1993. I will also take a more conservative figure since these are reports of “would be” situations that are not 100% factual. Let’s assume “only” 100,000 situation in which a homicide was avoided by a gun owner. By the same logic presented by the commenter E Schwartz, Gun owners should get tax credit at the rate of $1,000,000 for every death avoided. Deduct the 10,000 deaths from the 100,000 deaths avoided and we are left with 90,000 deaths avoided. Tax credit of $90B for gun owners! Now, how are we going to spread this tax credit around? The more guns the person owns the higher the tax credit? Or the highest the caliber of gun the person owns the highest the credit? Maybe this discussion is a little bit premature? However what’s clear is that properly applying the idea from E Schwartz could make gun ownership an unexpected tax shelter for the non-rich!

Expansion#2: I will give E Schwartz the benefit of the doubt. I will assume he/she is an individual who is not gun control biased. Rather an individual who is honestly worried about the well being of Americans. The question now is why focus on deaths that are a fraction of the overall deaths from all reasons? Car accidents deaths greatly surpass those from guns. Should we apply the same excise tax on car owners? Well, with cars also saving lives (ambulances and such) this may be a wash. (I don’t know) But how about imposing such tax on alcohol sales that will cover cost of deaths from DUI accidents “only”?

Reminder: The constitution says “Government shall not infringe” about guns. It does not say that about cars ownership. Nor about alcohol drinking…

Obama’s Health Care – End of Life Rationing Is Here.

Here is the original article of charles krauthammer in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/30/AR2010123004409.html

Most people don’t remember Obamacare’s notorious Section 1233, mandating government payments for end-of-life counseling. It aroused so much anxiety as a possible first slippery step on the road to state-mandated late-life rationing that the Senate never included it in the final health-care law.

Well, it’s back – by administrative fiat. A month ago, Medicare issued a regulation providing for end-of-life counseling during annual “wellness” visits. It was all nicely buried amid the simultaneous release of hundreds of new Medicare rules.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), author of Section 1233, was delighted. “Mr. Blumenauer’s office celebrated ‘a quiet victory,’ but urged supporters not to crow about it,” reports the New York Times. Deathly quiet. In early November, his office sent an e-mail plea to supporters: “We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists . . . e-mails can too easily be forwarded.” They had been lucky that “thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it. . . . The longer this [regulation] goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

So much for the Democrats’ transparency – and for their repeated claim that the more people learn what is in the health-care law, the more they will like it. Turns out ignorance is the Democrats’ best hope.

Government Health Care System 1

In Sweden.
Man in his 60′ was treated in Sept. 2009 for urinary tract infection. In March 2010 her returned with foreskin irritation which was diagnosed as inflammation. With no relief after three weeks with prescribed treatment he was instructed to seek further medical help at the local hospital. The first appointment available at the hospital was FIVE MONTHS LATER. By then he was diagnosed with penis cancer and his penis had to be removed. Read the original article here. http://www.thelocal.se/31130/20101229/