Sometimes, I find it easy to look at the gun laws in California and to wonder just what else in the heck they can come up with to infringe on people's rights. They already do far more than I think will survive legal challenge in the years to come that I can't comprehend anything else they could get away with.

It just goes to show you that I lack sufficient imagination on the topic.

Part of that is because I'm not motivated to concoct new gun control schemes. As such, I don't put a lot of thought into it. Anti-gun lawmakers in California, on the other hand, don't seem to have much difficulty, as this latest example illustrates.

On Friday, California Assemblymember Mike Gipson (D) introduced a bill that would require homeowner insurance companies to ask insurance applicants how many firearms they own and report it to the government.

The Residential property insurance firearms bill AB-3067 is an addition to Section 2086 of the Insurance Code, and would require insurers to "update the contents of their applications for homeowners’ or renters’ insurance to include the questions regarding the presence, storage, and number of firearms by January 1, 2026."

A bill has been filed in California that would require homeowner's and renter's insurance companies to ask how many guns people own and to report that information to the state: https://t.co/giLP0e6DKI pic.twitter.com/XsKgKtCdKX

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) February 17, 2024

It would then require an insurer to "annually report the information gathered from the questions regarding the presence, storage, and number of firearms to the Department of Insurance and the Legislature beginning on January 1, 2027."

Now, I can't think of a legitimate reason why the state would need this information. 

While insurance companies could arguably have need for asking--they're property, after all, and would be insured. Plus, unsecured guns are easier to steal than unsecured guns, so storage factors into it from their end as well--there's absolutely no reason for the state to need that information.

Especially since California already has gun registration for both handguns and long guns. What more do they need?

I get that the bill claims there won't be any identifying information in the data they get from insurance companies, but that's really beside the point. 

Anytime a government at any level decides to create a burden for literally anyone, be it private citizens or corporate giants, then they need to explain exactly why such a burden is needed. Environmental laws, in theory, protect the water we drink or the air we breathe. Traffic laws reduce the potentiality of fatal car crashes. There's a reason for those laws, and while we may not agree with those reasons or we may think it's the wrong way to do things, at least we know why the laws were proposed.

With this, though, they don't even bother.

 In and of itself, that's a big red flag. If they don't tell you why they need this measure, you can be assured you're not going to like the reason for it.

All this will do is likely increase the cost of homeowner's and renter's insurance in California, provide the state with a bunch of information it doesn't actually need, and make a lot of gun owners uncomfortable.

While comfort isn't guaranteed in life, the government isn't supposed to be the ones ominously threatening our rights like this, either.