Only in Texas

Courtesy of my friend Rod Furmanski (with whom Rico used to shoot, back in California), this by Enrique Rangel at Amarillo.com about Texas and taxes:

Every summer, just before children go back to school, millions of Texas families take advantage of a three-day sales tax holiday to buy clothes and shoes for the youngsters. Senator Jeff Wentworth wants to do the same for hunters who need handguns, rifles, shotguns, and ammunition for their annual hunting trip. The San Antonio Republican has introduced a bill that would exempt the sale of those items from the state sales tax, if purchased the last weekend of August. The state collects about $22 million a year in sales taxes from the purchase of firearms and ammunition, Wentworth said. "This holiday tax would not make a dent on the $22 million," he said. "This is just one weekend out of the 365 days in the year." It may even spark more interest in the hunting industry, which in turns helps pay for the state's park system and other outdoor activities, he said.
Some of Wentworth's colleagues such as Representatives Carl Isett, a Republican from Lubbock, and David Swinford, a Republican from Dumas, agreed. "I am all for it," Swinford said. "This may even generate more interest for hunting, and that would be beneficial to the state."
But other lawmakers are not sold on Wentworth's bill. "We have a back-to-school tax-free weekend every year because it helps a lot of working families," said Representative Garnet Coleman, a Democrat from Houston, who sits on the House Calendars Committee, a key panel that decides what legislation goes to the chamber's floor for debate. "But at a time when we may have a shortfall, I don't see how this would benefit the state," Coleman said. "If we exempt guns and ammunition from the sales tax even for one weekend, let's have a tax holiday to buy cars, to buy sailboats, to buy motorcycles, to buy trade mills..." Even if these were prosperous times, the Legislature would not be receptive to Wentworth's bill, Coleman added. "It is not because we don't believe in people's right to bear arms," he said. "It's because we don't think we ought to subsidize an industry, which is what this bill would, subsidize the gun industry."

Rico says that he has heard Texans refer to people, let alone politicians, from Dumas as being from 'Dumbass', but he'll reluctantly forego that reference this time...