Chicago official proposes tax on firearms, bullets

CHICAGO – As Chicago struggles to quell gang violence that has contributed to a jump in homicides, a top elected official wants to tax the sale of every bullet and firearm.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle submitted a proposed budget on Thursday that would impose a tax of a nickel for each bullet and $25 for each firearm sold in the nation’s second-largest county, which encompasses Chicago.

Preckwinkle’s office estimates the tax would generate about $1 million a year, money that would be used for various county services including medical care for gunshot victims.

Through last week, the city reported 409 homicides this year compared to 324 during the same period in 2011. Although the violence still doesn’t approach the nearly 900 homicides a year Chicago averaged in the 1990s, officials say gang activity was largely to blame for a rash of shootings earlier this year.

Preckwinkle insists the ordinance is far more about addressing gun violence than raising money for a county that faces a budget shortfall of more than $260 million.

“The violence in Cook County is devastating and the wide availability of ammunition only exacerbates the problem,” she told the board Thursday.

Dave Workman, of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Bear Arms, said the tax proposal is sure to infuriate gun rights advocates when they hear about it.

“It’s not the law-abiding citizens stacking bodies like cordwood in Chicago; it’s the bad guys,” he said.

Preckwinkle sought to fend off that argument during her remarks Thursday. She said nearly a third of the guns recovered by police after being used in Chicago crimes had been purchased legally, initially at least, in suburban Cook County.

Gun rights advocates from around the country who watched closely as Chicago’s handgun ban made its way through the courts, culminating in a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2010 to overturn it, say this proposal has definitely caught their attention.