I want to compliment Commander Laubengayer for his defense of the excise tax on guns and ammo which supports state wildlife agencies, wildlife restoration projects and public hunting. I join him in support of that tax.

However, some counterpoints need to be made in response to his letter in last week’s Indy. First, nasty Democrats like to hunt too, and I suspect he would like to have their support in defense of the pro-wildlife excise tax.

The second point concerns his gratuitous indictment of “gun-grabbing” Democrats. If Democrats are gungrabbers, they do a very poor job as evidenced by the more than 400 million guns scattered across this country with one or more guns in approximately 42 percent of households.

Third and most important, we need a far higher excise tax on guns and ammo than the Commander supports. We need it to help pay for the damage to human life and well-being that results from the misuse and abuse of firearms in this country. Drawing from data posted at everytownresearch.org, I extrapolated an annual percapita cost of gun violence at approximately $840. Note, per-capita means the cost for every man woman and child in the country. Note also, that the calculated costs can vary, but no matter how calculated they total in the tens/hundreds of billions of dollars. Note again, that approximately 60 to 70 percent of American adults do not own a gun, but the cost of gun violence falls on everyone regardless of whether or not they own a gun. In addition to the economic cost, we have the tens of thousands of lives lost every year to guns.

Let’s bring the issue a closer to home: “The rate of gun deaths has increased 48 percent from 2011 to 2020 in Kansas, compared to a 33 percent increase nationwide. This means that in 2020 there were 165 more gun deaths than in 2011. Kansas has the 21st-highest societal cost of gun violence in the US at $994 per person each year. Gun deaths and injuries cost Kansas $3 billion, of which $111 million is paid by taxpayers.” In 2020, compared to others states, Kansas youth, age 19 and under, had the sixth highest death rate by gun at 8.9 deaths per 100,000. Think your kids are safe in the land of guns and ammo? Think again.

Given the above costs, one might easily justify a tenfold increase in the 10 to 11 percent excise tax on guns and ammo that the Commander supports.

As for the popular cliché that the best defense against a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun, understand that at one time every bad man with a gun was a good person before becoming a bad man with a gun.

I will conclude with a violent dose of gun reality. According to Ward Farnsworth, an author that I read recently, facts do not matter, which is to say that none of the above matters. It does not matter because the American/Kansas electorate does not care. Apparently, there is no limit to the costs and the loss of life that Americans/Kansans are willing to endure to keep their status as “Second Amendment purists.” Disagree? Prove me wrong.

Jerry L. Marsh

Ellsworth