Because guns are so in danger of disappearing in Texas, state representative Jeff Leach (a Republican, of course) introduced the Texas Gun Ownership Reinforcement Act, which will create a tax-free holiday to help gun-nuts buy even more guns and ammo before the imminent NRA-predicted zombie apocalypse.
Let’s face it – it’s hard enough to plan and execute the mass-murder of school kids without having to worry about the added burden of onerous state taxes.
The legislation would make March 2, which is Texas Independence Day, a tax-free holiday for purchasing shotguns, rifles, handguns, and ammunition, among other gun supplies.
Think of it as the GOP version of the stimulus where, instead of creating jobs, everyone dies.
Leach wastes no time explaining who’s the real enemy here. As always with Republicans, and gun-nuts generally, the enemy people need to arm themselves against is the federal government:
“Texas must take the lead in the fight against the federal government’s attempts to infringe on our Second Amendment Rights. The Texas Gun Ownership Reinforcement Act encourages and incentivizes lawful gun ownership by allowing law abiding citizens, hunters, and sportsmen the opportunity to save money on firearm and hunting equipment, benefitting Texas taxpayers and small business owners and spurring economic growth. As we fight against the federal government’s overreach, there is no more appropriate day to instate this tax-free holiday than on Texas Independence Day.”
As Leach makes clear, these people are arming themselves against the American government. Let the NRA claim all it wants that our government isn’t the enemy they’re arming themselves against, we know better. The gun-nuts’ own words belie their intentions. They hate our government, and they’re arming themselves as a result. If you’ve got a better definition of sedition and domestic terrorism, I’d like to hear.
If Republicans, and especially Texans, hate the American government so much, why they don’t they just leave? As I wrote a few months ago, “we can only hope that Texas’ drinking buddies, Alabama and Mississippi, and the rest of their freeloading Dixie family, join them in their big, racist Winnebago and drive away forever.”
Now, sure, Texas would have to pay us the nearly $20 billion in “failed” stimulus money that GOP Governor, and pro-secession freak, Rick Perry took from the “evil” federal government. And Texas might need to also pay us back for the $26 billion in farm subsidies the federal government has provided them from 1995 to 2011.
You see, Texas has a history of being – how shall I put this delicately – a bit of a disaster. David Badash has done a great job detailing the “Texas Miracle” – he’s some of what David discovered about Texas:
- Texas has a $27 billion dollar budget deficit
- Texas ranks #4 in population living below the poverty line (17.2 %).
- Worst environmental record in the United States
- Ranks #1 in illiteracy
- Ranks #1 on the poorest gun regulations in the US and highest per capita gun murder rates in the US (The Brady campaign gives Texas a score of 6 out of 100 possible points.)
- Ranks #1 in the lowest high school graduation rate
- Ranks #1 with the highest interest rates “pay day” companies can charge
- Ranks #1 in those making below minimum wage
- Ranks # 1 (26.5%) who lack health insurance
- Ranks # 1 (20.3%) of children who lack health insurance
- Ranks # 1 in the highest per capita executions in the world
- Ranks #50 in $ spent for Medicaid for the poor and children
- Ranks 50th ( dead last ) in $ spent on its citizens
- Ranks #2 in the rate of food insecure children.
- Ranks 49th ( the 2nd lowest ) in Medicaid $ given to nursing homes
- Ranks #1 in teen repeat births
- Ranks #4 in teen pregnancy rate
- Ranks #3 in teen birth rate
- Ranks #2 with the highest home insurance rates
- Ranks 49th in $ funded for the mentally ill
- Ranks #1 with the highest overall pollution rate
- Ranks #4 in adults under correctional control
- Ranks #1 in adults under probation
At this point the miracle seems to be that Texas has survived this long.
Texas was also ranked as the lowest healthcare provider by the federal government a year ago and it’s unlikely to have improved dramatically since that time. Unfazed by such am embarrassment, state representative Leach still finds it more important to address non-existent problems like the supposed dearth of guns in America, than deal with Texas’ serious social problems.
Welcome to Second Amendment clown school (image via Shutterstock)
Of course Texas isn’t alone. Gun-nut-landia has been in overdrive ever since the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, in which 20 six- and seven- year olds were murdered in cold blood by a proud defender of the Second Amendment right to massacre children and moviegoers. The gun-nuts’ response to Sandy Hook, from the NRA on down, has been to use this tragedy to get even more guns out there. If you listened to them, you’d have thought that gun owners, rather than the children shot to death by the son of a gun owner, were the real victims of Sandy Hook.
For example, just a few days ago we reported on a Missouri Republican trying to pass a law that makes it a crime to propose gun control in that state. Yes, no better way to stop the evil federal government than to create an evil state government.
But Missouri wasn’t alone. The NRA, only days after Sandy Hook, tried to capitalize on the tragedy to push for guns in every school in America (a boon to its gun-selling brethren, to be sure).
Or how about Joe the Plumber, who still thinks he’s relevant. Joe is raffling of an AR-15 assault rifle – the same gun used to mow down the children at Sandy Hook – in order to make a “point” about gun control.
What point are you trying to make when your response to children getting mass-murdered is to give away free copies of the gun used to murder them?
Or my personal favorite, the Tennessee gun salesman and trainer who said he was going to “start killing people” if President Obama issued any executive orders on gun control following Sandy Hook.
Of course, these guys are all saner than the gun-nuts who now say that Sandy Hook was a hoax perpetrated by the federal government in order to justify a crackdown on guns. Texas can have them too.
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