.05 per Bullet Shot Down

Someone must have steered Preckwinkle in the direction of an Econ 101 textbook:

• Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle today dropped plans for a five-cent bullet tax, but still wants to charge a $25 tax on every gun purchase.
  
  The compromise was negotiated over several days with Commissioners John Fritchey and Edwin Reyes, both Chicago Democrats, who had balked at the guns and ammo taxes.
  
  In exchange for their support, Preckwinkle agreed to create a $2 million fund to combat gun violence. Fritchey had proposed dedicating $1.4 million to anti-gun violence efforts. She also agreed to exempt law-enforcement officers from having to pay the tax, which helped convince Reyes to support the plan.

Evidently, she only absorbed half the lesson though. If we can get a gun for $25 cheaper in Kane or Will or DuPage county, we'll be doing that instead and picking up a few hundred bucks worth of ammo while we're there.

And if you thought for an instant that this was anything but a punitive tax on those who dare to own a gun, this ought to make it clear:

• The bullet tax was projected to raise $400,000 in revenue. The gun tax would raise $600,000, Budget Director Andrea Gibson said.
  
  The revenue would help defray the cost of medical care for people who are shot and then treated at county-run, taxpayer subsidized Cook County Hospital. The hospital treats about 670 gunshot victims at year at an average cost of $52,000, Preckwinkle said.

$1 million in new taxes to defray a bill of $34.8 million in gunshot care?  What a fucking joke.