SEC. 2.
The Legislature hereby finds and declares all of the following:(a) Gun violence is a public health and safety crisis. While California’s gun homicide and gun death rates are lower than the national average, firearm violence remains a leading cause of death, injury, and trauma for young people and especially young people of color in this state.
(b) Preventing gun violence and delivering community peace and safety to all Californians is a matter of racial justice. From 2016 to 2018, homicide was responsible for 46 percent of all deaths among Black teenage males in California, according to data
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Over 96 percent of these young homicide victims were killed with firearms. The parents of a Black son in this age group were as likely to lose their child to gun violence in California as nearly every other cause of death combined.
(c) Gun violence imposes enormous harms on those who are not direct victims as well. The Director of the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention presented research to Congress demonstrating that “youth living in inner cities show a higher prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder than soldiers” in the nation’s wartime military.
(d) People who have been victims of violence are also at substantially higher risk of being violently reattacked or killed. Relatedly, exposure to violence and
associated traumas can encourage some people to seek safety from armed groups or to become involved themselves in cycles of retaliatory community violence.
(e) In addition to this enormous human toll, gun violence also causes economic harm in impacted communities and imposes enormous fiscal burdens on state and local governments and taxpayers. A report from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform in 2020 determined that each firearm homicide in Stockton, California California, cost taxpayers at least $2,500,000 in direct government costs such as medical, law enforcement, court expenses, and lost tax revenue; nonfatal shootings with a single suspect were
also estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $1,000,000 on average. A 2021 report by Everytown for Gun Safety found that gun deaths and injuries cost California $22.6 billion annually, of which $1.2 billion is paid by taxpayers every year. Gun violence also imposes broader indirect costs in the form of reduced home values and reduced profitability for local businesses. A report by the Urban Institute found that each additional homicide in a census tract in Oakland, California California, was “significantly associated with five fewer job opportunities among contracting businesses (businesses losing employees) the next year.”
(f) The year 2020 saw an unprecedented surge in firearm and ammunition sales across the nation, and this trend has continued into 2021. Since
the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an unprecedented surge in firearm and ammunition sales across the nation. The Washington Post reported that January 2021 had the third highest monthly firearm sales total on record, with an 80-percent year-over-year increase compared to January 2020. A spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the chief national trade association for the firearm and ammunition industry, told the Financial Times in August 2020 that “There has never been a sustained surge in firearm sales quite like what we are in the midst of.” In addition, a 2020 NSSF report
noted that “the economic growth America’s firearm and ammunition industry has experienced in recent years has been nothing short of remarkable.” In addition, the May 2022 report by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives indicated that the number of firearms produced domestically nearly tripled since 2000.
(g) This surge in firearm and ammunition sales and profits has occurred alongside an unprecedented nationwide spike in shootings and gun homicides. The Washington Post reported in late December 2020 that “The United States has experienced the largest single one-year increase in homicides since the country started keeping such records,” and that this unprecedented spike in murders was “due largely to gun violence.”
In May 2022, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the firearm homicide rate increased by roughly 35 percent since the COVID-19 pandemic from 2019 to 2020.
(h) As the firearm industry has gained record profits, state and local taxpayers have faced increased costs and economic harms as a consequence, while more families and communities have suffered the brutal loss or victimization of a loved one.
(i) Firearms, ammunition, and firearm precursor parts sold by licensed dealers and vendors of these products contribute to high rates of gun violence, and broader human, mental health, and economic harms. Gun dealers, for example, are the leading source of firearms trafficked to illegal markets, often through straw purchases, as well as
negligent losses. Data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) indicates that from 2016 to 2019 alone, licensed dealers in California reported losing track of nearly 1,300 firearms from their inventories, not including firearms reported as stolen. The true number of these misplaced firearms, including unreported losses, is likely substantially higher.
(j) For these reasons, record gun and ammunition sales in 2020 and 2021 2022 can be expected to contribute to increases in trafficked and stolen firearms fueling additional gun violence. This was confirmed by a cross-sectional time series study conducted by researchers from the
University of California Firearm Violence Research Center finding “a significant increase in firearm violence in the United States associated with the coronavirus pandemic-related surge in firearm purchasing.” This result is consistent with other studies showing that previous spikes in gun sales were associated with increased fatal and nonfatal firearm injury in California.
(k) The excise tax on firearm retailers proposed in this act is analogous to longstanding federal law, which has, since 1919, placed a 10 to 11 percent excise tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition by manufacturers, producers, and importers. Revenues from this excise tax have been used, since passage of the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act in 1937, to fund wildlife conservation efforts that remediate the effects firearms and ammunition
have on wildlife populations through game hunting, particularly through grants to state wildlife agencies, and for conservation-related research, technical assistance, hunter safety, and “hunter development.”
(l) This act will similarly place a reasonable tax on sellers profiting from the sale of firearms, ammunition, and firearm precursor parts in order to generate sustained revenue for programs that are specifically focused at remediating the devastating effects these products cause families and communities across our state.
(m) The National Rifle Association has referred to the Pittman-Robertson federal Firearms and Ammunition Excise tax as a “legislative model” and “friend of the hunter,” and the NSSF has repeatedly emphasized the importance of this federal excise tax
as well. A 2019 statement by an NSSF director published on NSSF’s web page emphasized that “an often overlooked, and certainly under-communicated benefit, is the impact that excise taxes on firearms and ammunition have on conservation and wildlife populations,” and a similar 2018 statement from NSSF praised Key Pittman and Willis Robertson, the legislators who sponsored the Pittman-Robertson excise tax, as “heroes of the most successful conservation model in the world.”
(n) The tax specified in this act is a modest and reasonable excise tax on sellers whose lawful and legitimate commercial activity still imposes enormous harmful externalities on California’s families, communities, and taxpayers. The modest tax proposed in this measure mirrors the Pittman-Robertson federal excise tax on other firearm and ammunition industry participants and
is similarly unlikely to discourage lawful sales and commerce in firearms, ammunition, or firearm precursor parts. A gun policy research review by the Rand Corporation in 2018 noted that the available “research suggests that moderate tax increases on guns or ammunition would do little to disrupt hunting or recreational gun use.”