By The Herald Editorial Board
A proposed ordinance that would add a tax on firearms and ammunition in Everett — and now being drafted by the council — should get full consideration not only from Everett’s city council, but by other city councils in the county and the Snohomish County Council as well.
The request by the Everett council followed concerns raised by Council President Brenda Stonecipher in April regarding a two-day gun show in mid-March at the Angel of the Winds conference center, managed by the Everett Public Facilities District, which is supported in part by city tax dollars. Gun shows at the conference center, prior to and after the March event, raised questions as to whether the gun shows were appropriate at a time of perceived increased gun violence in the city, including the shooting death of Everett police officer Dan Rocha in March 2022 and shooting this March that wounded Everett officer Chad House.
“I just find it very ironic and credulous that in the midst of the violent gun activity we’ve had in our city — we are still reeling from the death of officer Rocha and the shooting of officer House — and at the same time that the council is approving appropriations to buy back guns, the public facilities district board is approving permit or rental of our facility to have a gun sale,” Stonecipher said in April.
With details and the potential effects of such a measure still under consideration by city staff, the proposed tax, based on similar tax ordinances now in effect in Seattle and Tacoma, could place an additional $30 tax on the sale of firearms and a tax of 3 cents per round of .22-caliber or smaller ammunition and 5 cents per round for other ammunition. The proposal may also set exemptions of the tax for the sale of a single firearm between private parties and sales of less than 50 rounds of ammunition per quarter.
Revenue from the tax would be placed in a dedicated fund that could be used for city-funded firearm violence prevention, youth education and research. The council should also consider other uses, such as gun buy-back events and the distribution of trigger locks and other firearm safety measures.
Seattle’s ordinance is allocating the revenue, following the tax being upheld in court challenges, for compiling data on gun violence and gun violence intervention programs. Prior to passage of the tax, Seattle funded a study in 2012 at Harborview Medical Center that found that people treated for gunshot wounds at the hospital were 30 percent more likely to return to the hospital either for another gunshot or as a homicide victim. Counseling sessions of 20 to 30 minutes with gunshot victims to discuss firearm risks reduced readmittance rates, the study found.
That the Seattle tax has withstood legal challenges, and won an 8-1 ruling before the state Supreme Court in 2017, should resolve concerns about the cost to the city of potential lawsuits challenging the tax. Shortly after passage, Seattle’s tax was challenged on the basis that Washington state law bars cities from regulating firearms, reserving that authority for the state, which it has used in recent years to adopt several firearms safety laws and restrictions.
The city of Edmonds, for example, lost a challenge last July before the same court, regarding a gun-storage ordinance.
The difference between the Seattle and Edmonds cases, the state Supreme Court held in 2017, was that taxes are not regulation, simply a revenue source.
“While courts should be dubious of regulations masquerading as taxes (and vice versa),” the opponents of Seattle’s tax presented “no convincing evidence that the ordinance has a regulatory purpose or intent,” Justice Debra Stephens wrote for the court.
With the proposed tax modeled after Seattle’s and Tacoma’s ordinances, the same should be true for Everett.
Opponents of Seattle’s tax also have faulted it for under-delivering on its initial promises of revenue, which initially were estimated at $300,000 to $500,000 a year for a city of 3.5 million. Those figures have proven optimistic. Seattle’s tax generated about $134,000 in 2022, $165,000 in 2021 and $185,000 in 2020.
Everett, plainly, shouldn’t expect a windfall from the tax, but the point here is to support programs that can provide additional firearm safety measures that then don’t have to be funded by the city’s general fund, saving that money for Everett’s many other needs.
As well, critics have claimed that the city tax will prompt gun shops and gun sales events to move outside city limits. Perhaps, but a broader effort to persuade other cities and the county to adopt their own similar taxes — for the same common-sense purposes — could quickly curb such an exodus.
For perspective, consider that one fifth of U.S. households purchased firearms during the pandemic, with a total of nearly 60 million guns purchased from 2020 through 2022. Just this May, alone, an estimated 1.36 million firearms were purchased in the U.S., according to analysis of FBI data. Pandemic gun sales, reports The Hill, raised the share of Americans living in armed households to 46 percent, up from 32 percent in 2010. In Washington state, about 32 percent of households own at least one firearm, according to the RAND Corporation.
Recognizing that there were 896 firearms deaths in Washington state in 2021, and more than three-quarters of gun deaths in the state are suicides, any additional funds that can be spent on firearms safety and safe storage, outreach and education is money that would be well spent.
That a small portion of that support should come from the sales of firearms and ammunition is justification enough for a modest tax.
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