Latino Rifle Club Founder Takes Shot At San Jose

AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File

The City of San Jose has decided that it wants to make it tougher to lawfully own a gun by requiring all gun owners to pay a fee to the city and purchase liability insurance. I don’t care what they might try to say, they have to know that law-abiding gun owners are going to be the ones impacted by this law. I somehow doubt the criminals will be paying any fee or buying any insurance.

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However, not all people will feel the impact the same. As the founder of the Latino Rifle Association notes, minorities will be hit harder by this.

Latino Rifle Associations’ [founder P.B.] Gomez is worried the San Jose police’s approach to the insurance enforcement will impact the poor and people of color the most, suggesting they are prone to police contact.

He lamented that the new gun control comes at a time when gun ownership among minorities is rising. “You were seeing, across the country, rising rates of gun ownership. Most interestingly, rising rates of gun ownership for demographics who didn’t traditionally embrace gun ownership: Black people, Latino people,” Gomez said.

Gomez also noted the new controls are part of anti-gunners’ effort to dissuade Americans from gun ownership altogether. “They’re trying to shrink, by any means, the [number] of gun owners and to make gun ownership more of an inconvenience.”

He’s not wrong.

Economically, black and Latino people are far more likely to be disadvantaged than white people. As a result, they’re going to feel the weight of this measure disproportionately. While Democrats like San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo tend to act like they’re the defenders of the little guys, that only goes until those little guys decide to buy guns.

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At that point, Democrats don’t care anymore.

See, the problem is that while Gomez is right, Liccardo and the city council simply don’t care. In their mind, minorities give up their minority card the moment they buy a gun lawfully. Once they do that, they’re ready to wash their hands of them, at least on Second Amendment issues.

After all, once upon a time, Democrats created gun control laws specifically to impact minorities, so the idea of them doing it now shouldn’t really surprise anyone. It doesn’t surprise me, at least.

Now, though, black and Latino gun owners in San Jose are in a bit of a quandary. Those who are financially well-off won’t feel the pinch, but a number of them will, and it’s up to them to stand up and make it clear that this law doesn’t and won’t have the impact city officials think it will. Instead, it’ll simply make it harder for good people to protect themselves.

Plus, there’s the fact that the insurance simply doesn’t exist and Liccardo’s office apparently knows this. That’s got to be mentioned as well.

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The Second Amendment should be a bipartisan issue. It impacts every single American and is a right guaranteed by our Constitution. Unfortunately, it kind of is and will remain until at least some Democrats wake up and recognize that gun control doesn’t just impact a bunch of old, rich, white guys.

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