6. Unconstitutional Tax
San Jose refers to the new fee imposed on gun owners as a “Gun Harm Reduction Fee,” but it’s nothing less than an unconstitutional tax on the exercise of an enumerated right.
The Supreme Court has struck down similar laws, reasoning that “a state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal Constitution.”
This is precisely what San Jose’s fee does—require gun owners to pay an annual sum of money to exercise their Second Amendment rights inside the city.
7. Misplaced Blame
Lawful gun owners aren’t the driving force behind gun violence, and yet San Jose has singled them out to pay for gun violence.
Law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be saddled with the blame (or the bill) for criminal actions they didn’t commit, encourage, or facilitate.
8. Legitimate Solutions Ignored
If San Jose officials are serious about reducing gun violence and lowering associated financial costs, there are plenty of better solutions.
The city could focus its energy on enforcing existing gun laws—perhaps, for example, by disarming its share of the 23,000 Californians who state authorities know possess guns despite being prohibited persons.
It could make these unlawful gun owners and others who commit gun crimes pay by imposing fees and restitution to the state as part of criminal sentencing.
The city also could increase the size of its police force to deal with chronic understaffing and workload problems that inhibit officers’ ability to enforce the law.
Instead of opting for these rational and straightforward steps, however, the city apparently has defaulted to what’s become an all-too-common tactic in gun control politics—passing unserious laws that burden lawful gun ownership without addressing any of the real problems.
— Amy Swearer in 8 Problems With San Jose’s Gun Insurance Mandate and Gun Ownership Tax
Like the man said, “Doesn’t matter if it gets struck down. The law is in effect now; good enough.”
How you folks voting this time? You might wanna remind em!!
This. Make converts. Be an election watcher.
The San Jose Plantation Council’s insanity is no different than Jim Crow singling out and applying unconstitutional, ridiculous laws to Black Americans all because they were Black. In a nutshell the San Jose Plantation Council’s scheme boils down to if you own a gun in San Jose you are Blackballed and you pay. If you do not own a Gun in San Jose you are Whiteballed and you do not pay.
It should be clear by now…Yesterday’s sneaky Gun Control lives on in today’s sneaky Gun Control.
You’re missing the target a little there. If I’m black, I cannot become un-black. Being black is not a decision you can make, or unmake. Owning a gun is a decision that you can make, change, change again, at a whim. I can decide tonight to sell off, or otherwise dispose of all my firearms, ammunition, and accessories. Next week, I can walk into a gun shop, and stock up again.
It’s important to distinguish between factors and conditions over which you have no control, and factors and conditions which you do have some control.
paul…I never miss. Before and after Jim Crow if you were Black you were singled out and denied the right to own a firearm. That means from the get-go there was no option for Black Americans to decide for themselves whether to have a gun or not.
Once upon a time just because you were Black you were subjected to discrimination. And by the same token in San Jose “just because” you own a firearm you are subjected to discrimination which by definition is not limited to skin color but also includes, “things.”
No matter how you try to slice and dice it Your hypothesis leaves discrimination in the driver’s seat.
“It’s important to distinguish between factors and conditions over which you have no control, and factors and conditions which you do have some control.”
What conclusions do you think we should draw from these distinctions? How do they relate to what San Jose is doing?
Please be specific. (Firearm safety rule #4: Be sure of your target and what’s behind it.)
img…Your omnidirectional factor and condition distinctions gives your target time to shoot back.
The idea of liability insurance for gun owners is one of those throw-away concepts that sounds good to anti-gunners because it boils down to penalizing gun owners, somehow, for something, and that’s really all they care about. When you get down into the nitty-gritty, it all falls apart. First of all, you need to understand what situations you’re insuring against. Nobody is going to insure against intentional criminal acts (and they couldn’t if they wanted to, it’s illegal in California). Then you need to understand who is actually being insured – namely the owner, not any third party who steals their gun. Third, you need a workable theory of liability that would entitle the injured party to the insurance money – keeping in mind that criminal acts by third parties are generally considered superseding causes that absolve the owner of liability. Fourth, such insurance actually has to be actually available, or it can’t possibly serve its putative purpose.
“Fourth, such insurance actually has to be actually available, or it can’t possibly serve its putative purpose.”
Might be a bridge too far in explanation.
Such insurance (as separate from prepaid legal expense) is quite available in many states, and umbrella liability insurance is not that expensive for the amount of coverage. It is not the insurance in San Jose that is the burden, but the fee that goes to medical expenses from DGUs. Most likely, as with lottery systems “dedicated” to education or other favorite cause, the “fee” money will simply go into the general treasury. As to the actual liability insurance, that is designed to assure trial lawyers that there will be money to pay for personal injury civil trials.
The bonus to San Jose is that if you are sued for liability, and do not have insurance, you are in violation of the law, thus subject to criminal charges (which are probably felonies).
Insurance against what? What would the policy say? Do you really think you can buy insurance that will cover an act by some third party? Don’t compare automobile liability insurance. The two are not the same. I can’t see any liability coverage company offering insurance for some third party act with a firearm. The cost would be prohibitive even if some underwriter thought that it might be a money maker.
“Don’t compare automobile liability insurance.”
That’s not the case. Personal liability insurance is actually “a thing”. If you are claimed to have harmed another person, you may have been saddled wit a liability risk. If the harm is not due to an illegal act, you can file a claim for expenses reimbursement under your personal liability “umbrella” policy. As with all insurance products, there are levels of coverage, and list of exceptions, and customizations often listed/purchased.
Thus if, while allowing your friend at the shooting range to inspect your new cap gun, and the friend drops it on his foot, breaking a toe, the personal liability policy could be used to reimburse the friend (or yourself) for medical expenses accumulated as a result of medical care to “fix” the broken toe. Or, if your teenager destroys a $100,000 SUV in an auto accident, the personal liability policy can be used to “expand” your liability coverage included in your auto insurance policy (personal liability policies are often require that auto insurance policies include liability coverage to a certain level).
It is worth a call to your auto insurance or homeowner company to discuss personal liability insurance.
The “intent” of the SD law is to have personal liability insurance to cover damages to persons and property when you cause the damage through use/possession of your firearm. In theory, an injured party (person and/or medical treatment facility) could file for financial recovery of expenses of medical care. Such a successful claim would lessen the financial burden of government-run hospitals.
In actuality, the actual wording of the legislation may result in insurance companies refusing to offer liability insurance to legal gun owners. That result is supposed to deter people from owning guns at all, because they cannot risk the liability of damages allegedly caused by the ownership of firearms. In the end, the purpose of requiring gun owners to have liability insurance covering gun ownership is not to actually re-pay medical expenses, but to add a criminal charge to be imposed after-the-fact.
Not being available didn’t stop microstamping or the 9th saying just because the tech doesn’t exist isn’t a good enough reason to overturn. They lie with a straight face just like a kid who has been blatantly busted stealing from your wallet.
“…the 9th saying just because the tech doesn’t exist isn’t a good enough reason to overturn.”
Actually, the ruling was worse than that. It was a ruling by the state supreme court, which declared that simply because a law could not be complied with did not constitute justification for overturning the law.
The situation was that some jurisdiction in Californication (maybe even the state legislature) tried to implement micro-stamping before the technology was available, thereby preventing the possession of guns lacking micro-stamping.
The plaintiffs position was that the law, effective before technology caught up, put the rights of citizens in jeopardy of criminal charge for not doing something that could not be physically accomplished.
I lost interest after the state SC ruling. Not aware if the case reached the 9th Circus.
“How you folks voting this time? You might wanna remind em!!”
They will vote the same, as always. There is a mountain more benefit to voting Dem that they can ever get voting pro-gun, or against anti-gun. In order to retain, or improve those benefits, Dems will take freebies over constitutional principle, or self-defense. (just like the majority of gun owners)
As I keep saying, privately owned firearms are a secondary target. The primary one is the right of private citizens to use force, especially deadly force, in self defense. Depriving them of firearms is a way to make defense more difficult. Ask a gun grabber if he would be satisfied if you split a home invader’s skull with a baseball bat instead of shooting him. His answer (which I expect to be in the negative) will tell you what his real goal is.
@Kendahl
“Ask a gun grabber if he would be satisfied if you split a home invader’s skull with a baseball bat instead of shooting him. His answer (which I expect to be in the negative) will tell you what his real goal is.”
You have a very valid point there.
We have a reformed anti-gun pro gun-control person in our local shooters population here. This person was rabid about gun-control, very active on the local level and nationally in the background. For many years she lived and breathed anti-gun and gun-control. She’s confronted me and others face to face yelling at carrying a gun and did not mind getting right up in your face about it in one of her many ‘protests’ outside gun stores and other places with her local group of anti-gun freaks.
Short story version: She got attacked by a couple of guys, almost beaten to death, had one of our local good guy with a gun not come along by chance like he did and engaged those bad guys she would have been killed. Her death was, as her doctor put it to her, likely assured with just one more blow to the head. Her first stop out of the hospital was to a local gun store to buy guns and see where she could get some training.
She shows up at the range a lot now, and carries too. In conversation with her she told me and others that she understands now about self-defense and is ecstatic that she has a right to have a gun and a right to use it for self defense. But she also told us she came to this understanding after being attacked that while she was anti-gun she would have rather we died than be able to defend ourselves with a gun and that’s the attitude behind closed doors at national level too among the anti-gun groups.
Quote————-The city could focus its energy on enforcing existing gun laws—perhaps, for example, by disarming its share of the 23,000 Californians who state authorities know possess guns despite being prohibited persons————-quote
If you follow this link from the T Tag article you would find this information I just posted below. This was to easy.
Thomas also believes a lack of federal gun restrictions undermines California’s tough stance on guns. “It’s far too easy for those that want to get their hands on certain guns or flout the laws to just go to states where the laws are weaker. And the truth is, guns are being trafficked from states with weak laws into states with strong laws.”
According to the Giffords Law Center, California has the 7th lowest gun death rate in the nation while boasting the toughest gun laws in the U.S., which include universal background checks and restrictions on assault weapons.
Quote——————–It could make these unlawful gun owners and others who commit gun crimes pay by imposing fees and restitution to the state as part of criminal sentencing.————————quote
Losers do not have jobs or money and you cannot get blood out of a turnip. The above statement is as laughable as it is asinine.
Quote—————-The city also could increase the size of its police force to deal with chronic understaffing and workload problems that inhibit officers’ ability to enforce the law.——————–quote
Wages have stagnated over the last 50 years while Corporate profits have increased 900% so the solution would be not to tax all the poor part time worker troglodyte slaves but tax the Corporations. But this is an impossibility because the Corporations pay off the prostitute politicians who run the state.
darcydodo…Gifford’s Law Center? Isn’t that HQ for the spaceman who attempted an AR15 Straw Purchase and was denied by a FFL who caught the sneaky darth vader lying on a form 4473? Once again your copy and paste marxism manure backfires.
Why don’t you stfu and hop on your tricycle and go into one of those so called states that make gun purchase easy peasy and see if you can purchase and resale to a criminal without fear of the ATF busting your door down. Let us know how it works out.
He’s an evangelical soc-ial-ist (hyphenated to try to slip past WordPress).
Only those in Clearwater Florida are more imprisoned by their own beliefs.
No, he’s just a guy punking everyone that responds to him.
A troll, no more no less.
d
I believe nothing giffords says, or you either.
Why not fine the criminals? They did the crime,they should do the time and pay the fine. Why should law abiding people pay for what criminals do?
And charging any fee to exercise a constitutional right is illegal thats settled law.
Now come back with your usual 10000 words of bs.
The comment is asinine. The dead victims are not helped by locking the barn door after the horse escaped. In other words putting it on the 4th grade level for you preventing criminals and psychopaths from getting guns in the first place prevents them from killing people. The History of gun control has proved it in many foreign countries and even to a much smaller degree in Capitalvania as California has one of the lowest homicide rates with guns and some of the toughest gun laws with universal background checks and restrictions on assault rifles.
And your reference to it being unconstitutional to charge a fee, you must live in an alternate universe as many states have had fees for years including a fee to get a ccw license. So obviously the courts are not preventing fees from being charged.
A fee if crazily high to the point the average person cannot afford is akin to a poll tax. New York City charges crazily high fees to even own a gun. Hmmm.
And Dacian, you in the past have pointed out how the US government consistently misbehaves, falsely imprisoning people, lying to get into wars…
And yet you want them to determine who is the criminal and psychopath?
Considering the fact that psychiatry has been abused by The State in the past,
Considering the extent of police corruption and apparent far right infiltration of law enforcement, you still want to allow these corrupt entities to say who exactly is a criminal?
Can you even reconcile that with us?
Meanwhile, stupid, prosecutors in liberal cities are declining to prosecute criminals for gun crimes. In fact, they are declining to prosecute criminals – full stop. The prosecutors want to instead prosecute people for defending themselves against criminals. Do you remember the Kyle Rittenhouse trial?
So we remove rights from everyone; enslave them all.
And then we will control the criminals?
Good plan!
Punish 1000 innocents men to be sure to punish the one guilty one as the DNC suggests. Make everyone suffer as much as possible!
Why would anyone do that?
Well for tolerance and compassion of course.
The DNC loves the tolerance and compassion of removing rights form citizens and making them all suffer as much as possible.
Vote Blue?
And in his diatribe he completely failed to answer the question about making the criminals pay the fine (or do the time) for their actions.
Southern Double Cross you dumb ass you did not read my first post above the second post.
If I read your post correctly, you believe that since the bad guys can’t pay, it is somehow fair to make law abiding gun owners pay for no other reason but because they have money. That about size it up? Wouldn’t it be fairer to do something like raise the sales tax rate so that everyone pays something into the kitty?
You didn’t answer the question in your first post either.
Taxing law abiding firearm owners for the actions of criminally inclined third parties is a collective punishment.
Southern Double Cross
Have 4th grader explain my post to you
If your answer about not being able to get blood from a turnip is your response, it still fails to answer why criminals shouldn’t be punished. They either pay the fine or do the time.
And punishing legal gun owners still does nothing to help the situation except make some useless hack of a politician feel like they’ve done “something”.
to Southern Double Cross
Now try and lie your way out of this one. I quote myself
quote————-Wages have stagnated over the last 50 years while Corporate profits have increased 900% so the solution would be not to tax all the poor part time worker troglodyte slaves but tax the Corporations. But this is an impossibility because the Corporations pay off the prostitute politicians who run the state———————–quote
Now I will quote you because you failed to understand the T Tag original article.
Quote————– They either pay the fine or do the time.———quote
The Article said no such thing. It did say that when criminals were sentenced they should also have to make payments for their crimes. Too which I responded————–
quote—————-Losers do not have jobs or money and you cannot get blood out of a turnip. The above statement is as laughable as it is asinine.————quote
Again Southern Double Cross try and lie your way out of this one too. And detox yourself before you post next time.
Do you ever read what you post?
So criminals shouldn’t be punished because they are poor? If they can’t do the time or afford the fine they should not do the crime.
Fines and prison are deterrences as much as punishments. Makes people think twice about consequences, at least sane and rational people. Criminals tend to be those who either don’t consider or don’t care about consequences.
And as for your quote about real average wages is irrelevant.
Your evangelism is not converting anyone.
“passing unserious laws that burden lawful gun ownership without addressing any of the real problems”
oh it addresses the real problems as they see it. for them, criminals with guns is no problem at all – citizens with guns, however, is unacceptable.
They reward their comrades and punish their enemies. It’s a simple concept.
The whole point of this ordinance is not to generate funds for the payment of the expenses associated with so-called “gun violence” but to increase the cost of lawful gun ownership in order to discourage citizens from buying and guns in the first place, or from keeping any guns they already own.
If I understand the ordinance correctly,the annual $25 fee is not per owner, but per gun, and even for my modest collection, that would be the cost of a mid-priced firearm or hundreds of rounds of ammunition–every year.
and lets not forget that $25 fee per gun TODAY!! is just the camels nose under the tent. any body think that $25 fee is going to be $25 for ever. next year it might $100 the year after that$500 per gun. these types of things never go down always up, up, and up!!
The goal of gun control has always been to prevent black people from getting guns. And one of the ways government used to prevent blacks from getting guns was, to make them more expense using government regulations. This is what quite common in the southern states. It no longer is. Because the southern states are passing constitutional carry. Or they are working on it.
California has simply adopted the “southern strategy of a racist gun control”. The white leadership who Control San Jose simply, look at the white middle class residence as “collateral damage”.
Rich white people, criminal or law-abiding, will always be able to afford guns.
“The Racist Origins of California’s Concealed Weapon Permit Law”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2599851
“The white leadership who Control San Jose simply, look at the white middle class residence as “collateral damage”. ”
Is it that, or Nouveau riche are themselves racists against white people now, and thus, following racist patterns with new laws designed to punish whites?
Knowing that people of color are effectively barred gun ownership, “gun owners” is simply code/dog whistle for “white”.
The rich white people. The connected white people in California. They do not look at themselves as being the average white person in California.
The white working-class are too dirty for them.
“They do not look at themselves as being the average white person in California”
The elite whites are guilt-ridden for being white. Thus, to punish themselves, and prove their moral superiority, they must punish other whites for being white.
They have to virtue signal because they have no real virtue in their lives. They’re immoral and empty inside.
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