A while back, San Jose decided that the problem in their community, particularly after the mass shooting at a rail yard there, was because of lawful gun owners.
I mean, they won't outright say it, but considering the law they put into effect--one that only impacts the law-abiding--and the way it works, it sure looks like they blame folks like us.
The law requires "liability insurance" and a fee in order to own a firearm. It's a nonsense law that won't stand up to judicial scrutiny in the long run.
And yet, as of the moment, there are no lawsuits challenging it.
A landmark gun control law in San José is free from legal challenges for the first time since its inception, following an appeals court ruling earlier this month, though it’s likely the issue will receive more scrutiny in the future.
Proponents of the law say the latest legal victory could push other cities toward adopting similar regulations, envisioned as a partial salve in addressing gun violence locally while national action has long stalled.
“There are other municipalities that have tried to model ordinances after ours or are contemplating it and have been watching this really carefully,” said Tamarah Prevost, an attorney representing San José in the gun ordinance case.
“I think overall what it shows is that municipalities can come up with creative solutions to what’s obviously a very complex problem. So San Jose’s hope is that it sends a signal and sort of a green light to other municipalities that they should hopefully do the same,” Prevost said.
San José’s Gun Harm Reduction Ordinance – which requires gun owners in the city to carry a liability insurance policy and to pay a fee toward gun violence prevention – was the first of its kind and was mired in litigation beginning minutes after its approval by the City Council in January 2022.
The insurance requirement has been in effect in the city since the start of 2023, though the city is still hammering out plans to enact the fee portion, which has been slowed in part as litigation continued.
Eventually, the city plans to designate a nonprofit organization to collect the fee from gun owners, which could be around $25 annually, and manage the spending of those funds to help “reduce the risk or likelihood of harm from the use of firearms in the city of San Jose,” among other purposes.
So what's the issue? Why is this not being sued into the stratosphere?
Well, there are a number of issues.
In July 2023, a federal court in San José dismissed the National Gun Rights Association’s arguments against the insurance mandate portion of the law, saying the new regulations are in line with the country’s “historical traditions” and constitutional guarantees for gun ownership.
The court also dismissed the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association’s challenge to the fee portion of the law.
The Howard Jarvis group then appealed its concerns with the fee, which it called an “illegal tax” on gun owners, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco. A panel of appeals court judges on Sept. 10 agreed the case should be dismissed, saying it is too soon to challenge the fee portion of the law because it hasn’t been implemented yet.
So for the Howard Jarvis group, it looks like it's mostly an issue of standing.
For NAGR, the issue appears to be that the federal court's take was bat-guano insane.
There's absolutely no historic precedence for anything like this with regard to guns. While Rahimi noted that the analogs don't have to be direct parallels, I fail to see any history regulation requiring anything at all like insurance.
Especially as the insurance mandate accomplishes less than nothing regarding the real issues at work in San Jose.
See, no insurance on the planet will cover an intentional act on anyone's part. At most, the mandate will provide coverage for accidental shootings, but statistically, those are incredibly rare. Crime, however, is an intentional act on someone's part, though, which means the mandate doesn't actually do anything to address it.
The truth of the matter is that even if it wasn't constitutional, it should be overturned based on absolute stupidity.
Once again, though, anti-gun officials seek to punish the law-abiding for the actions of the law-breaking. Collective punishment was idiotic when I was in school and we'd all get in trouble for what that one little schmuck did. It's even dumber in the real world.
Then again, if people like this had any sense, they wouldn't be pushing gun control in the first place.
Eventually, though, this law is going to be challenged again. When it is, it's going to eventually be overturned because there's no historical precedent regardless of what the federal court said. The fee amounts to a poll tax and it should be overturned as well.
Nothing about this law is smart, clever, or constitutional. It won't fix anything and all it does is punish people who have done nothing wrong, all while ignoring the criminals running around San Jose.
