Chicago Tribune’s Dahleen Glanton has a plan to offset Illinois’ oh-so-expensive violation of Second Amendment rights: Do it even more.

The Second Amendment doesn’t say that gun ownership has to be free of charge
But the freedom to own a firearm doesn’t mean it has to be free of charge. It doesn’t mean that owners can’t be a tiny bit inconvenienced. And someone’s right to own a gun certainly does not trump the safety rights of the rest of us.

Two words: Poll. Tax.

How ’bout charging Chicago South Side would-be voters $250 for voter registration, and making them pay another $100 for a background check?

To paraphrase: But who says that the people who choose to vote shouldn’t have to go into their pocketbooks every now and then? Voters have no problem approving taxes on other people for the latest welfare benefit. But if you ask them to get free voter registration cards they go ballistic. They are perfectly satisfied allowing taxpayers who would never get EBT to supplement the administrative costs for their munchies.

Perhaps $250 for a reporter’s license, and a hundred buck background check for each ill-considered column?

License to practice religion? (Huh; churches are specifically exempted from taxes.)

Hey! You could pay $250 to be free of warrantless searches.

Glanton, peruse the Bill of Rights, and tell us which — other than the Second Amendment — routinely require permission slips and preemptively-prove-your-innocence checks.

Speedy and fair trial license?

Here’s a wild idea. Instead of treating an enumerated right as a privilege to be taxed, stamped, regulated, restricted, folded, spindled, and mutilated — at some cost to government and victim alike — let’s save money — for government and victim alike — by treating the Second Amendment as the right that it is.

The money you save could be better spent on tracking down actual criminals who bypass your permission slips anyway. Of course SA Kim Foxx will probably just let them go, since dealing with real criminals is tough and scary. Honest citizens are easier marks.

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