SECTION 1.
The Legislature hereby finds and declares all of the following:(a) Firearms sold by gun dealers contribute to unacceptably high rates of gun violence in communities across California. Dealers are the leading source of firearms trafficked to illegal markets, often through straw purchases as well as preventable losses or thefts. Data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) indicates that from 2016 to 2018 alone, licensed dealers in California reported losing track of nearly 1,200 firearms from their inventories. The true number of these misplaced firearms, including unreported losses, is likely substantially higher.
(b) Federal law broadly
immunizes firearm dealers from civil liability for a wide range of conduct that contributes to death, injury, and other social harms in our state. Essentially no other industry enjoys such a sweeping degree of immunity from civil claims that may incentivize safe and responsible commercial activity. Dealers may also frequently evade other forms of accountability for behaviors that threaten public health and safety. According to a 2013 report by the United States Department of Justice Inspector General, for instance, 38 percent to 53 percent of dealers inspected by ATF from 2004 to 2011 were found to be operating in violation of federal laws “that ban sales to prohibited persons and require inventory and sales to be tracked.” Very few faced any substantial civil or criminal consequences.
(c) Gun dealers’ products, including ammunition, impose enormous fiscal burdens on California’s taxpayers, including an estimated $1.4 billion each year for
direct public expenditures such as law enforcement, courts, and health care costs in response to firearm deaths and injuries in our state. This estimate does not include other major expenses, such as crime victim compensation, substantially diminished tax revenue due to lost income, depreciated property values, and reduced business activity associated with gun deaths and injuries in California.
(d) In recent years, gun sales have been booming in California. The California Department of Justice processed between 880,000 and 1,330,000 dealer records of sale per year between 2015 and 2017, up from 344,000 to 375,000 from 2005 to 2007, just one decade earlier.
(e) At the same time, large spikes in gun violence at the national level have also impacted our state. From 2014 to 2017, gun murder rates rose by 16 percent in California, even as there was no such increase among homicides not
involving firearms.
(f) The excise tax on firearm retailers proposed in this bill is analogous to the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, commonly called the Pittman-Robertson Act, which imposes a 10 to 11 percent federal tax on the sale of guns and ammunition by manufacturers, producers, and importers. Revenues from the Pittman-Robertson tax, which has been described as a “legislative model” by the National Rifle Association, fund wildlife conservation efforts that remediate the effects firearms have on wildlife populations through game hunting.
(g) The purpose of this act is to similarly place a reasonable tax on the firearm industry’s activities in order to fund programs to remediate the devastating effects firearms cause many families and communities across our state. This act is not intended to penalize firearm and ammunition sellers or otherwise discourage lawful
firearm and ammunition sales and commerce whatsoever, but is intended to fairly generate revenue to fund CalVIP programs that are targeted and effective at mitigating the harms that firearms too often cause.
(h) The CalVIP grant program funds evidence-based violence reduction initiatives that alleviate the societal harms caused by firearms in communities that are disproportionately impacted by gun violence.