{"id":56428,"date":"2015-12-04T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=56428"},"modified":"2015-12-03T19:27:14","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T01:27:14","slug":"56428","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=56428","title":{"rendered":"The New Poll Tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Anoka County Sheriff’s office has announced, to some fanfare, that they are lowering the fee for carry permits from $75 to $10<\/a> for people on active duty in the military.<\/p>\n

Which, on the one hand, is great.<\/p>\n

But then I had two thoughts:<\/p>\n

Rights<\/strong>: \u00a0I support our military – especially their right to not be as undefended as a pack of hamsters when not covered by Rules of Engagement overseas.<\/p>\n

But are they\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>entitled to their civil rights and liberties than the rest of us? \u00a0Should government be deciding which citizens have\u00a0easier access to their Second Amendment rights, any moreso than one’s First, Fourth, Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment rights?<\/p>\n

This is, in a way, a throwback to the bad old days, pre-2003, when a law-abiding citizens’a access to their Second Amendment rights – their ability to get a carry permit – was directly related to their clout and access to local government officials. It’s more benign, of course – it’s the same shall-issue policy once the fee is out of the way – but $10 is easier to cover than $75, no matter who you are.<\/p>\n

That’s the danger when government gets into the business of doling out our freedoms\u00a0to\u00a0<\/em>us instead of us doling its power out to it; it starts picking winners and losers. \u00a0And that’s what this is, even if we generally support this particular group of winners.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff’s Nest Egg<\/b>: \u00a0Sheriffs charge a wide range of fees around the state; Ramsey County is up around $100, along with most of the other Metro counties, if I recall correctly; others are much cheaper.<\/p>\n

But the fee covers the cost of a department employee taking an application (which the applicant fills out), filing it, and at some point entering the applicant’s data into one or more databases to see if there’s a disqualifying hit. \u00a0Then the state prints and mails a card.<\/p>\n

What’s the actual cost of this process, in terms of government time and materials? \u00a0Estimates vary – law enforcement is pretty tight-lipped about it – but it’s somewhere between $5 and $20. \u00a0And I’m no expert, but I’d say Anoka County has just given us a “tell” about the actual cost.<\/p>\n

Which means plenty of Minnesota counties are putting away huge nest eggs of carry permit application fee money. \u00a0 It’s become a tax on law-abiding citizens exercising their tights – not much different than the poll taxes that got ruled out of existence decades ago.<\/p>\n

Congrats, Anoka County servicepeople, and enjoy your new benefit in good health.<\/p>\n

But think about it, everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Anoka County Sheriff’s office has announced, to some fanfare, that they are lowering the fee for carry permits from $75 to $10 for people on active duty in the military. Which, on the one hand, is great. But then I had two thoughts: Rights: \u00a0I support our military – especially their right to not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grass-roots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56428"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56430,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56428\/revisions\/56430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}