Army Sergeant, professional shit-stirrer and 2nd Amendment Advocate.
I know that I am in the small minority here that loves Selena, but her Facebook discussion item today is a classic:
I know you guys think she’s a tree hugging, unicorn loving liberal, but here she is going more for the tree hugging, unicorn loving Libertarian, and she’s been doing that a lot lately.
Anyway, to her larger point, I think it is a good one. Obviously a ton of folks think fees and registration for guns is perfectly valid. And her question notes correctly that none of the folks thinking that would agree to a poll tax. In fact, I bet if you took only folks who supported gun control and asked how many thought it was appropriate to pass a law requiring IDs at polling places, it would be heavily skewed.
So, just to throw it out there…..can anyone come up with a cognizable argument why a poll tax is worse from a moral or constitutional frame of reference than similiar measures aimed at gun ownership? I already know you don’t agree with any argument, but can you even think of one?
Come on, channel your inner Democrat Underground denizen.
Category: Politics
“Come on, channel your inner Democrat Underground denizen.”
Soryy, TSO, but I’m not that fucked up in the head to even attempt it.
Not sure if this is considered an “argument” or not, but here in Georgia there’s a bill pending in the general assembly that would bring the state into a Vermont style concealed carry situation. In opposition are quite a few of the regular suspects, but interestingly enough many counties are opposing this due to the loss of revenue from issuing permits. Again, not calling this an argument, but in the era of diminishing state budgets, anything that cuts revenue is being opposed by those in power.
For teh sake of devil’ advocate I will give it go.
The idea of defending one’s self is admiralbe, and even logical. What is in real question is hte method. Are firearms the only reasonable method to defend one’s self and family? Certainly not. One can go to any number of self defense classes, seminars, or training camps to learn weaponless forms of combat or self defense. Firearms were once not only a method of defense but also a tool for survival. They are now recreational and lesser a method of self defense. In our past it was necessary for people to learn to use firearms and the training came from that. Today many have the same access but very little training. Some one who has never seen let alone held a firearm can obtain one, thereby causing harm. Possession of a firearm, in today’s society does not constitute skill. having a registration process can at least make sure that individuals have gone through some process to get trained, only those with desire to handle a firearm properly will have done so. Creating a barrier to entry and preventing injury.
Where as with a poll tax it limits in every way an indiduals only method of electing officials or even partcipating in the government process. There is no other method of voting and putting a poll tax clearly eliminates the right.
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I hope that creates something. I can dismantle my own argument here but will leave that to collective.
S&L- Well done under the constraints.
I don’t see how one gets around the constitutional angle, but apparently the supreme court does. But, from a moral standpoint, that’s an argument anyway.
Steadfast
You could tax only people that walk into a polling place, not those voting by absentee ballot. There is more than one way to vote…. Also, the constitution gives a right to bear arms….not a right to carry a knife, ball bat, etc…
Also, you mention a registration process that requires some training. While I think that is wholly appropriate, what if we required someone to pass a test to vote? (Wouldn’t that be nice!)
Just my attemp to dismantle your argument….don’t know how that flies but there it is…
Might as well have permits for every single fuckin thing you can kill a person with according to that one dumbass.
Calif has some of the highest violent crime rates in the world. We also have some of the dumbest gun laws in the US. One requires gun makers to submit each handgun to be “tested” to make sure it’s safe…what this really means is the gun maker has to bribe the state with $30,000 for each model they want to sell in CA. Even if the only change between one model and another is the color or barrel length, they have to submit it for testing and pay another 30 grand.
So, our gang bangers have the safest guns in the world.
Coffee Table permit?
I’ll give it a try:
While the right to bear arms is indeed enshrined in the 2A, Congress is well within their rights to define scope and method in which the right can be exercised. If in the absence of Federal guidelines, this right then is assumed by the states under the purview of the 10th Amendment. As long as the laws/fees/etc., do not outright ban the possession of firearms (suitable for militia use), the laws are generally deemed constitutional.
As it relates to voting taxes, fees assessed for exercising this right were typically placed at a rate that excluded entire segments of the population, and often were directed at specific ethic minorities.
Whereas fees assessed for firearms tend to be address the manner and scope of how one can still exercise their right in relation to public safety, voting taxes were an instrument for removing the rights of targeted individuals entirely.
That was the argument I expected Claymore, with the lefties not noting that this scheme essentially means that poor people lose their right to self defense, or at least find it significantly hampered.
I wonder which those folks consider more sacrosanct, the right to vote, or the right to self defense.
@8, see the previous post with the Action Figure Therapy video.
Yeah, my strawman has weak kung-fu since it really doesn’t address how most early gun control laws were rooted in racism and directed at disarming poor blacks in the rural South during Jim Crow.
Which is of course the genesis of the NRA in asserting that all freed men, regardless of race should be equipped with firearms for protection.
Ole Burnside was first Prez of NRA as I recall.
Off the cuff, I would say that we have the right to bear arms. But the arms themselves are goods in the commercial context, which means that they can be regulated via taxes and fees to some degree, so long as these fees do not make owning a gun prohibitive. The courts, incidentally, also have upheld the notion that some people can actually forfeit this right ie Lautenberg Amendment for domestic violence (including those charged but not convicted, it’s been a problem in the military and law enforcement), bans on felons, etc…
Voting, however, are also fundamental rights that also can be forfeited for felonies. However, voting does not involve the commercial context and consequently, does not relate to goods and services. Therefore, this spit-balling legal theory surmises that poll taxes are worse because they tax nothing but carrying out a fundamental right. So with firearms, one has the right to bear arms, but must pay for the physical good. With voting, there is nothing to tax but (hot?) air. Because this argument is already half-baked, I won’t even get into the racist history of poll taxes, or the numerous other holes in this post… But I tried.
To add a log into the fire as it were. On a federal level, the Supreme Court has held that the 2nd Amendment protects an indivdual right to bear arms (Heller v D.C.). This clearly identifies a negative right.
The Supreme Court has held that there is no right to vote in a Presidential election (Bush v Palm Beach County Canvasing Board). This deceision, while only pretaining to one specific type of election (that of President), puts the act of voting below that which is a right. The kicker is that deceision was 9 to 0.
Using my messed up 11B logic, it would make more sense, at least legally, to allow a poll tax but not registration of firearms.
I think JAGC just made a compelling legal argument for the Federal government to provide us all with firearms.
@ 14. You nailed it.
Democratic Underground denizen….in order to do that I would have to change my name. I tried it once before and I thought I was giving myself a brain aneurism. I don’t either should be taxed. I just believe that you should have a voter registration.
@ 16 … and legal forms ID cards, indicating elegibility for election day!
Uh, JAGC . . . isn’t “poll tax” technically simply a synonym for “per-capita tax”?
#20, no, a poll tax conditions your right to vote (and is specifically forbidden by the 24th amendment). A head tax or capitation does not.
Can anyone come up with a cognizable argument why a poll tax is worse from a moral or constitutional frame of reference than similiar measures aimed at gun ownership?
The 24th Amendment specifically and explicitly states that the right to vote cannot be conditioned on the payment of a poll tax or any other tax. Not even the tiniest little tax.
A “measure aimed at gun ownership” – the question would be whether it’s “infringing” the right to keep and bear – i.e., is this a revenue raising measure like a sales tax, or is it a “we don’t want you to have this so we’re jacking up the cost” kind of thing? It could be just as bad, or not, depending on the details.
P.S. – The 24th Amendment explicitly applies only to federal elections. But the Supreme Court held poll taxes to be unconstitutional (on Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection grounds) at the state level in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. No time to look up the case right now, but that’d be the place to start.
Strictly devil’s advocate here:
It is in society’s best interests to engage every legal adult citizen in the political process, and it is this very engagement which must inevitably lead to wiser and more informed voters, who in turn will make wiser and more informed voting decisions leading to more effective rule makers and rule enforcers. Therefore, it is in society’s best interest to remove any and all impediments which might inhibit vote casting by legal adult citizens of the society.
Compare this to gun ownership. How would widening the pool of gun-owners lead to wiser and more informed gun owners? On the one hand, voters are exercising their right to delegate their own power of citizenship to someone else, someone more able to handle the incredible responsibility of this power than the voter himself. On the other hand a gun-owner is explicitly refusing to delegate similar responsibility to police or other law-enforcement and instead taking on that awesome responsibility for himself, and it is entirely possible that he-or-she is not of sufficient maturity or emotional stability to be able to take on that responsibility.
That is of course the reason for these fees, whether or not it is so explained, whether the rationale for them is stated explicitly or implicitly, the purpose of gun permits and registration fees is to shrink the pool of gun-owners in the belief that fewer gun owners will mean a concomitant reduction in death and injury due to firearm discharge. While on the other hand it is certainly in society’s best interest to allow its citizens to successfully delegate away their own powers—of self-defense for example—to others who are vetted and trained to handle the awesome power they are entrusted with.
Alberich: Actually, the term “poll tax” is in fact a synonym for “per-capita tax”. See
http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/poll-tax/
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0839551.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/467842/poll-tax
http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~kousser/dictionary%20entries/poll%20tax.pdf
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poll+tax
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Poll+Tax
http://thelawdictionary.org/poll-tax/
along with many other sources.
The term is most commonly today associated with per-capita taxes formerly levied in the post-Civil War US South as a requirement of voting. This use of poll taxes was indeed made unlawful as a condition of voting in Federal elections by the 24th Amendment in 1964, and the ban was later extended as a prohibition to state/local elections by the SCOTUS in 1966. But that form of poll tax is hardly the only one that exists, and that usage for the term is not exclusive. To say that the term “poll tax” exclusively refers to taxes levied as a prerequisite to voting does not appear to be correct.
At the risk of offending our more liberal brethren: I find substantially less moral justification for allowing those delinquent on their taxes to vote than I do for firearms permit fees.
One can make a good argument that charging firearms permit fees merely recovers the costs associated with lawful regulation, and that it is morally correct that those electing to own a weapon should bear the cost (like owning a car or driving at all, owning a firearm is optional). In contrast, I find it rather hard to think of a good counter for the argument that one should honor one’s financial obligations to society – e.g., one should pay one’s lawful taxes – before one is accorded a voice in how those taxes are spent.
You know…
We don’t put a registration fee on registering to vote.
We already pay a tax when we buy the firearm. The government could increase the taxes on firearms like they do for alcohol and tobacco. Scary thought but they don’t need permission to do that only face thier voters.
So saying that registration fees and poll tax are not entirely the same thing. Adding a registration fee to voting and a registration fee for firearms would be the same.
We already tax firearms at the point of purchase.
Alberich, in liberal logic the Constitution is a flexible document. While there is an Amendment today that could be removed making any argument using the logic,”it’s llegal”, to a temporary thing.
Many others belive that the Constitution is a physical document that states the obvious and therefore cannot be reduced nor given away. In other words the Constitution states the bare minimum that cannot be taken away. Do anything else but these you cannot ever do. The Constitution was written to restrict government not the people. Following the logic of the Founders everything is granted to us under the sun. Only government restricts it.
In other words any fool can make a law and any fool can follow it.
Under those registration schemes that involve taking a class or passing some firearms test, could not using that sort of thinking be also applied to a poll test? It would obviously have to be basic, but I would argue anyone who doesn’t know how many electoral votes it takes to win the presidency shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
#20 – I see that you are correct historically; the “poll” in “poll tax” didn’t refer to voting originally (as I thought it did – learn something new every day).
However, the definitions you cite, at least the ones I checked, admit that this term is normally used for a tax on the right to vote; whereas the term “head tax” or “capitation” would avoid all such confusion. And I daresay that in TSO’s original post, he had the “tax on voting” definition in mind, else his question would not make much sense.
TSO: I believe that might prove problematic, given Guinn v. United States (1915), the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Oh no, I agree with you Hondo. I’m more curious how folks work through the logic.
Then again, sometimes it seems the Supremes aren’t particularly constrained by logic.
Alberich: Agreed – that’s today’s normal use. My point was that, even though the most common it’s not the exclusive definition of the term.
Seeing terms abused because people don’t know all proper uses is simply a pet peeve of mine. The result can occasionally cause problems – like the resent controversy over the use of a particular synonym for “miserly”, which was misinterpreted by some as a racial slur.
@32, that was the most asinine thing of all time.
TSO: for what it’s worth, I’d have no problem with a test similar to the test given for naturalization as a prerequisite for voting – that would test both reading comprehension and basic knowledge of US government. But that’s just me, and it’s not allowable under the law.
In fact, I’ll go further and say that I agree with John Stossel that those who are ignorant on the issues should just stay home on Election Day and not vote.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/19/ignorant-people-please-stay-home-on-election-day/
#33 – Of all time? How about —
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/santa-fury-at-ho-ho-ho-ban/story-e6freuy9-1111114877276
@32 – Speaking of pet peeves, I kind of recent people not proofreading their work when they’re lecturing others on proper word choice. :-p
I see your “Ho ho ho” and raise you a “black hole”.
http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/07/dallas-county-meeting-turns-ra.html
AdnyN: I’m glad to see you “recent” me.
Nice proofreading, by the way.
And yeah, I know it’s “AndyN”. Mea freaking culpa.
Both are rights. When you have to pay the government for permission to exercise said right, it is no longer a right.
I am amused by the differences between this conversation and the one at my facebook. This one, even if there are holes in the logic, seems a little more interestingly rational-but seems to be more based on the laws on the books, rather than “how are they morally dissimilar”.
For the record, I think taxes on voting AND guns are BOTH wrong.
But I’ll also add: with a poll tax, you definitely got to vote. With a tax to get a permit to own a gun in your home, you pay BEFORE you get the weapon, and if they deny you, they keep your money and you still don’t get the gun.
Hondo, TSO comments 32-34, agreed.
#41, Well, he did say “moral or constitutional frame of reference,” after all. Me, I went for the “or constitutional” half of the challenge.
AS- define holes, please.
Nikki: I’d beg to differ. Anyone who has the money has the right to own a home – but exercising that right gains one the obligation to pay property taxes. Anyone has a right to buy a car – but one pays sales taxes on it (and in many jurisdictions, personal property taxes annually as well). Anyone has a right to find a job for which he/she is qualified and get hired, and earn a living – but earning that income comes with a the obligation to pay income taxes. Hell, even the right to buy your own food or clothing in many places is taxed in the form of sales taxes.
In fact, even voting is not completely free. Exercising the right to vote costs the time and effort (and usually money for travel) to go to the polls – or the cost of a couple of stamps to request and return an absentee ballot.
Bottom line: exercising virtually any right has its costs; it’s up to the individual to decide if the cost of exercising that particular right is worth it. Voting and gun ownership are hardly unique in that respect. The only difference I see is that the right to vote has some constitutional protection against government-imposed economic costs due to the 24th Amendment.
I don’t agree with a poll tax to be allowed to vote, but considering the results we currently have in Mordor-by-the-Potomac, how about a current events or intelligence test to be allowed to pull the lever??
I wonder which those folks consider more sacrosanct, the right to vote, or the right to self defense.
Declaration of Independence talks about life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Seems to me they’ve got it in the right order. There is no liberty when there is no life.
That being said, I am opposed to fees for CCW as I believe we should all be at the same level as VT and AZ, but NH isn’t much more difficult or costly (mine was $10.) As for registration? Yeah, right.
And the 24th Amendment is pretty clear on no poll tax, but I’ve no issue with a simple three to five question quiz before someone pulls a lever. If you don’t know who the fuck the VP is or who your Senators/Congressmen are, how the fuck are you going to convince me that you know how your vote is going to best serve the country and not simply your own best interest? The self-serving voter is, IMHO, one of the reason politics was, is, and will continue to be FUBAR.
Well, I’ve read or heard most arguments against the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, but just came up with this one, that makes more sense than all of them:
One only has the opportunity to fire off a certain number of votes every 1-2 years, generally of lesser quantity than a single 9mm magazine, and often less than the lawful # of rounds in a pump shotgun. It costs far less to produce the mechanisms of voting (fingers and registration cards) than it does to produce the mechanisms of shooting (bullets and guns), therefore the latter should be taxed to a greater extent, as a percentage of their cost and usage.
The most proficient voters, those who keep up with the news, issues, and records of legislators, can vote no more proficiently or in greater quantiy than can the drive-by voter who follows only the letter behind the names and no one can vote for two people running for the same seat, while the most proficient shooters can put 3 rounds a piece in 5 gang bangers before the first novice can get his pistol out of his baggy pants though.
Hence, we need to create an equalizer, whereby the expert gun users must consider the costs of each of his rounds, and decrease the rounds bought to practice. In this way, we can create a more level playing field between the guy that picks his gun up for free in someone else’s home, but cannot afford to practice, and the rich guy that can afford to learn to shoot properly in the elite special operations forces training camps.
Besides that, the world is already overpopulated and police officers need jobs, so it is better that we maintain the status quo, whereby when a criminal kills a citizen, the Police file the reports and attempts to find the person to put in prison, so we can feed him a good nutrional diet and where he can become a good voter.
Be Advised: Sarcasm of this post will saturate all posts in the immediate vicinity.
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