DRAFT:
According to the
National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, the number one cause of spinal cord injuries is automobile accidents. Car crashes account for nearly half of the spinal cord injuries in the U.S. The number two cause of spinal cord injuries is falls. Acts of violence, which include gun and knife and beating injuries, are third on the list-but only account for a little more than 10 percent of all spinal cord injuries.
I am a law abiding citizen of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and therefore have gone through great difficulty to secure my LTC permit in accordance with MGL. I feel that I’m already being wrongly discriminated against by not being able to legally purchase specific items thanks to the Attorney General's "Consumer Safety" regulations. In addition to this, I have to be periodically hassled to renew my license and pay an additional $100.00 "fee" for the "privilege" of being fingerprinted and photographed like a common criminal and having my file maintained by the same agency which maintains criminal records.
Now Rep. James H. Fagan wants me to pay an additional $25.00 tax every time I buy a handgun in order to fund spinal cord research to, in part, benefit people injured by the criminal misuse of a handgun. There is no basis or standing for this proposal to further tax law abiding citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in this manner since there is no correlation between these acts of violence and those of law abiding citizens like me. To be clear, as a law abiding citizen not involved in the criminal misuse handguns by definition, I'm insulted by the suggestion that I should pay for anything related to the
criminal misuse of handguns. I’m willing to bet that the criminal who shot
MacArthur Williams did not obtain his handgun legally and I doubt that same individual was the holder of a valid LTC.
If Rep. Fagan were truly interested in helping his constituents that suffer from SCI, then he would be proposing this surtax on every automobile sold in Massachusetts not on handguns and builders. In fact, by
Dr. Ruby’s own circumstances this would be warranted. There are far more purchasers of automobiles than purchasers of handguns and automobiles cause nearly 50% of the injuries. The revenue generated by such an act would be much larger than that gained off handgun purchases. Why then hasn’t Rep. Fagan made that proposal instead? The answer is simple. Rep. Fagan is apparently more comfortable further victimizing handgun owners and collectors with punitive, unfair, additional taxes and sees this as an easy target than fighting the entire Commonwealths licensed drivers. Perhaps Rep. Fagan doesn’t have the courage of his political convictions in this case to risk the wrath of automobile purchasers who might not understand why they should pay a tax for spinal cord research programs?
Let me be clear. While I’m sympathetic to the circumstances of Dr. Ruby and MacArthur Williams and others like them this is not the proper venue for solicitation of funds for their cause. In fact, it may just be that the opposite is true and ask them to reconsider their position. Why? As a tax payer I object to this trend of using legislation to make mandatory donations to such healthcare and charitable causes. It’s a blatant misuse of our government, tax payer money, and is morally wrong. We the people of the Commonwealth, who are charitable at heart, donate millions upon millions to organizations like this every year. We don’t need to have the legislature increasing our taxes at every whim of some special interest group by stepping in to decide who we must donate to and by how much.
Therefore, I respectfully ask that you toss deny this or any other petition like it that seeks mandatory donations to charitable organizations based on perceived cause and effect.
