How does one celebrate a gun holiday? Do you stuff the kids’ stockings with 9mm ammunition? Do couples kiss under a 30-round clip? Does the family play a rousing game of “Is It Loaded?” (Trick question, it’s always loaded.) While I’m obviously being hyperbolic, is that too far from what Georgia Republicans want?

In the wake of a mass shooting that killed four students and injured nine more at Apalachee High School, Georgia lawmakers had an opportunity to show that they actually give a damn about preventing future bloodshed. A gun safety bill was on the table. It wasn’t perfect, but it had some teeth. Gun owners could get a $300 tax credit for buying a gun safe or enrolling in a firearm safety course. A tiny, common-sense incentive for people to store their weapons responsibly.

So what did Republicans do? They gutted the safe storage incentive. Kept the credit for safety courses (fine, sure), and then slapped on a four-day sales tax holiday for buying guns and “paraphernalia.” That’s right, in response to a school shooting, the Georgia Senate’s idea of ‘gun safety’ is to make it cheaper to buy more guns.

While Republicans are handing out tax breaks to ‘responsible gun owners™‘ like candy, Georgia families are drowning. Teachers are buying classroom supplies out of their own pockets. Rural hospitals are shutting down. Mental health services are underfunded. Social workers are overloaded. Public schools are scraping by on shoestring budgets while lawmakers smile for cameras at shooting ranges and call it “freedom.”

Why are guns the only thing that deserve a tax break? Why is it easier to get a discount on a Glock than it is to get affordable childcare? Why is the answer to school shootings “let’s make it easier to buy the thing that caused the school shooting”?

And don’t talk to me about constitutional rights. We have a right to free speech, but you don’t get a tax break for buying a printing press. We have a right to religion, but Bibles don’t go on sale tax-free every Easter. This is about priorities. And time and again, Georgia Republicans are showing us where theirs lie, with the gun lobby, not the kids cowering under desks.

In Georgia, it seems the only thing safer than owning a gun, is the tax break you get for buying one.

(Source)

Changes to gun safety bill now include tax-free holiday on guns and paraphernalia