5 minute read
DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO (AVOID) SAN JOSE?
After mayor pushed gun insurance mandate and annual fee, his California city got sued.
STORY BY DAVE WORKMAN
Almost immediately after anti-gun San Jose, California, Mayor Sam Liccardo pushed through a requirement that gun owners obtain liability insurance and pay an annual gun fee to the city – to offset costs of so-called “gun violence” – the city was sued by a gun rights organization.
Following the council’s initial vote on January 26, a second vote was required for ratification. That occurred on February 8, according to Rachel Davis, a spokesperson for the city. She said the two ordinances – one dealing with the fee and the other with the insurance requirement – will take effect in August.
Mayor Sam Liccardo San Jose, located near San Francisco, is a longtime hub of the high-tech industry, but the recent passage of two gun-related measures has Second Amendment advocates hitting control-Z via the federal court system.
Because of that, more lawsuits are likely to follow, and Golden State gun rights activists are convinced that the insurance and fee requirements are unconstitutional. Although California does not have a specific right-tobear-arms provision in its state constitution, ever since June 2010 when the US Supreme Court handed down an affirmative ruling in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, the state and its political subdivisions have been subject to the Second Amendment. The McDonald case – brought by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) – incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment.
But civil cases challenging gun control laws on federal constitutional grounds frequently take lots of time, and in the 9th US Circuit, which covers all of the Western states, gun rights cases can drag on and on. The court makeup is still tilted toward liberal judges, despite some key appointments by former President Donald Trump.
Police officials have said that they won’t be actively enforcing the regulations, but if they come in contact with gun owners, they will ask for proof of insurance and whether the fees have been paid, according to published reports. While it did not file the first legal challenge to San Jose’s ordinance, the California-based Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) promised to take action before the council approved the new regulations. The group called the new mandates “burdensome, unconstitutional, and prohibited by California law.”
The state does have something of a preemption statute, which is how SAF has twice successfully litigated against gun bans by the City of San Francisco. One of those lawsuits also involved the
(THIS IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK; INSET: US SENATE, OFFICE OF SENATOR KAMALA HARRIS)
“The city could find itself drowning in legal actions, potentially costing more in attorney fees than the gun ‘fee’ could bring in revenue,“ writes author Dave Workman. (SHUTTERSTOCK)
National Rifle Association.
The current action against San Jose was launched by the National Association for Gun Rights.
BEFORE PUSHING AHEAD with the antigun regulations in late January, Liccardo bylined an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times, in which he acknowledged, “We anticipate that a barrage of lawsuits from the firearm industry and gun rights advocates will follow.”
The mayor has offered all sorts of justifications for his campaign against gun owners.
Then there’s this: “Imposing a modest annual fee on gun owners can support underfunded domestic violence and suicide prevention programs, gunsafety classes, mental health services and addiction intervention.”
In his op-ed, Liccardo admitted, “These new laws won’t end all gun violence.”
Indeed, according to Second Amendment activists, the new requirements will likely have no effect on the crime rate because they target the wrong people: law-abiding citizens.
As noted prior to the council’s action by San Francisco’s KGO, the local ABC affiliate, the gun control scheme “does not address the massive problem of illegally obtained weapons that are stolen or purchased without background checks.”
Criminals, who typically are disqualified by their records from even possessing firearms, certainly won’t be paying any fee on guns they’re not supposed to have, and they will not be purchasing liability insurance for the same reason. Once again, honest citizens get penalized for crimes they don’t commit.
That sort of cockiness comes from watching the way gun rights lawsuits are treated by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. While Second Amendment cases frequently are won at trial, or when appealed to the traditional three-judge panel, affirmative decisions are almost automatically challenged and subjected to an en banc rehearing before a full panel of federal judges, which invariably rules against gun rights. Then the appeal is sent to the US Supreme Court for possible review.
Liccardo, a Democrat, is simply playing the odds.
There are an estimated one million citizens in San Jose, among whom the Washington Examiner recently said could be some 50,000 gun owners. That makes for a formidable bloc of potential litigants. The city could find itself drowning in legal actions, potentially costing more in attorney fees than the gun “fee” could bring in revenue.
Gun owners living outside the city might simply not spend any money with any businesses inside city limits. They might take other actions, perhaps even a class-action lawsuit. There are several possibilities, and nobody has yet suggested finding pro-rights candidates to challenge Liccardo and members of the city council at the next election; a long shot, but not impossible. Editor’s note: Dave Workman is an award-winning outdoor writer and firearms journalist who writes a regular column on guns and hunting for sister publication Northwest Sportsman.
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