Retarded Politician of the Week

The first Retarded Politician of the Week is U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards, D-MD. New federal legislation, if passed, could allow District of Columbia residents to purchase firearms in Maryland (there are no firearms retailers in D.C.). The scholarly Ms. Edwards expressed concern that the cost of background checks on D.C. purchasers would place a "tremendous burden" on the state of Maryland at a time when its budget is already strained.

What a load of crap. Ms. Edwards is either lying or just incredibly stupid. I'll vote for stupid, thus her attaining status of Retarded Politician of the Week.

Allow me to elaborate. With instant checks in place, the retailer makes a phone call for the background check. I have had about ten of these in the last five years. I have never had to wait more than ten minutes while the retailer made the call to obtain approval for the sale. To be generous, let's just say that the proximity to D.C. makes the process take twice as long in Maryland.

Let's say that the average sale price of a firearm is $400.00. The state sales tax in Maryland is 6%. I'm not even going to count the local additions to the sales tax. So, on a $400.00 firearm sale, the state makes $24.00. If the background check took twenty minutes to complete, the state makes $72.00 per hour for the work. Taken another way, the state makes $24.00 it would not have had but for the firearm sale to the D.C. resident. Keep in mind that Maryland would still have to pay to staff the instant check line, regardless of whether D.C. residents purchase firearms.

Also consider that Maryland businesses would be profiting from the sale of firearms to D.C. residents. These are profits that are spent in Maryland by the firearms retailers, after those retailers pay taxes to the state of Maryland. I assume that these are the kind of taxes the state spends in its budget.

The idiotic equivalent of Ms. Edwards' statement would be for the Maryland State Police to sit at the state borders and refuse entrance to automobiles from other states because of budget constraints. Any idiot could see that denying entrance to out-of-state motorists would be depriving the state of business from those motorists and resulting tax revenue. Any idiot but Donna Edwards.

The source.