San Jose’s gun liability insurance requirement — the first-of-its-kind in America and upheld by a federal court judge last week — will make the city safer from the firearm-related violence that has wreaked havoc across the nation, its proponents assert.
But nearly eight months after the ordinance went into effect on Jan. 1, not a single resident has been cited for not having the insurance, according to the city manager’s office, raising questions about the law’s effectiveness.
Nor is there any data on how many firearm owners in San Jose are actually following the law. The city does not have access to the state’s gun registry, meaning it cannot contact gun owners to ensure that they are in compliance. Instead, the city is trying to boost cooperation through digital advertising, point-of-sale materials at gun retailers and letters to 2,400 local insurance agents.
Under the city ordinance, firearm owners must have homeowner’s, renter’s or gun liability insurance and ensure that it covers any losses or damages resulting from the accidental use of their weapon. A form proving that the owner has the insurance must be kept with the firearm at all times. In October, the San Jose City Council approved a measure penalizing gun owners up to $1,000 for not following the insurance requirement.
“It was a stunt,” said Kostas Moros, a Los Angeles-based attorney who advocates for the Second Amendment, about the city’s law. “This was never about making measured policy that the city could enforce in a tailored, responsible way. This was about making the news. They may still enforce this, but I think it really is going to be enforced when someone is in trouble for something else.”
The figures reported by the city also present a challenge for another key part of the law: a yearly fee paid out by firearm owners to a nonprofit that helps combat gun-related violence. San Jose’s roughly 55,000 gun owners were expected to contribute over $1 million to the group — but 17 months after the council approved the measure, it has yet to be formally set up. That part of the city’s law is also in limbo because U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in her Thursday ruling allowed the two plaintiffs suing the city to challenge the fee requirement through an amended complaint on First Amendment grounds.
— Gabriel Greschler in Why Is San Jose’s Gun Insurance Law Going Unused?
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This law is a travesty and a disgrace. The judge who gave it a pass should be ashamed, as should those who drafted it and signed it into law.
If they were smart, they will never charge someone, since a conviction gives the person charged legal ‘standing’ to challenge the law.
That way, it stays ‘on the books’ indefinitely and they can break their collective arms while patting themselves on the back…
That’s getting hard even here in NY. Crowdfunding and legal trolls are finding creative ways to establish standing (including assertions of future lawbreaking due to the legislation as they will not change everyday behavior for the state)
oldsht…If you were not such a history illiterate democRat lint licking pos sneaking around slandering POTUS DJT and His Voters you’d see the insurance scheme to exercise a Constitutional Right that shall not be infringed goes hand in hand with a, “Poll Tax.”
Trump sucks. He will cost us the next election because of ignorant brain-deaf fvckwits like you.
Exactly how many times did your parents drop you on your head as a baby, you stupid twit?
Get cancer and die alone, please… 🙂
Debbie, did he ever say or indicate in any way he was in favor of this law? No. While I am glad you know the history of gun control and support the 2nd, you seem to spend a lot of time and effort attacking others who manage to have the ability to focus on a wider array of approaches. It is tiresome.
The judge should be impeached and removed from office. But he won’t be. Because the voters are very well distracted by the “Bread and Circuses”.
Being able to use drugs in public without fear of being arrested, is a much more important freedom. Than Your 2A civil rights.
Having sex in public or urinating and defecating in public, without fear of being arrested. Are more “important rights”, than the 2A.
Every Politician (architects) who sponsored this travesty should be “Tarred and 🪶 Feathered” !Then Run out of the city naked!
This is clearly unconstitutional, its a ‘fee’ to exercise a constitutional right.
The Judge (an Obama appointee) was wrong, she likened the required ‘insurance’ to 19th century ‘surety’ law in the relevant period and didn’t consider its a constitutional right. The judge even called it a ‘fee’. (explained in video below).
Well one of the ways, more the one used to punish those who are still able to afford anything after inflation eats wages.
“The judge even called it a ‘fee’.”
A fee to exercise a civil right can be legal.
Case in point – You want to do a protest in Washington, DC. It’s legal for DC to charge you a fee to hold your protest.
Now, if that ever gets in front of the SCotUS, there’s a chance all fees like that can be nuked from orbit. (It’s the only way to be sure, after all… 🙂 )
Charging a fee to hold a protest is not the same thing, the fee goes for a permit. The permit fee is an administrative fee to, for example, cover clean up and any police activity or other ‘government’ services needed, and only applies to certain types of protests in areas where, for example, car or pedestrian traffic might be obstructed (police need to block roads for example and that fee money goes towards, say, overtime) or very large crowds at parks or plazas where police presence may be needed and clean up later after its over. Its not a fee to exercise free speech as individuals. So its not a fee to exercise a civil right even though it seems like one but conversely, for example, as an individual or group of individuals if you do not hold your protest in an area that does not obstruct pedestrian or car traffic you can protest anywhere on non-restricted public property without a permit fee.
This insurance is a fee on the individual constitutional right exercise, it is unconstitutional to require a ‘fee’ be paid to exercise a basic constitutional right (in this case firearm ownership).
“The permit fee is an administrative fee to, for example, cover clean up and any police activity or other ‘government’ services needed,…”
Like, the police and ambulance activity when a defensive gun use happens?
They most certainly can persuasively argue that position…
“Like, the police and ambulance activity when a defensive gun use happens?”
If they were going to argue that they would have already.
You misunderstand this ‘insurance’. Its a ‘liability’ thing and covers losses or damages resulting from accidental use, not intentional use like DGU. It pays the city, not anyone that actually suffered losses or damages resulting from the accidental use.
It was implemented based upon a false claim, to reduce ‘gun violence harm’ from ‘ghost guns’.
actually, they are mandating that gun owners must have a homeowner’s, renter’s or (their) gun liability insurance policy for their firearm(s). The insurance policy must cover losses or damages resulting from accidental use of the firearm including but not limited to death, injury, or property damage. If your ‘insurance’ does not cover for accidents (with a gun) (or you don’t have theirs) and they find out they charge you a $250.00 or greater fee (yes, even they call it a fee) and you get an ‘administrative citation’. If you have a license to carry a concealed weapon issued pursuant to California Penal Code § 26150 or § 26155 or are law enforcement or qualify for a hardship you are exempt from the liability insurance requirement. Oh yeah …. once again criminals are exempt automatically because they are not going to get liability insurance for their guns.
Officially its called a “gun harm reduction fee”. It part of their “Gun Harm Reduction Ordinance” to ‘fight’ ‘ghost guns’
Its a fee levied upon the law abiding to exercise a constitutional right, period.
The SJ law has a separate fee from the insurance. The fee doesn’t cover government costs and goes to a non-profit, so should be easy to overturn. Labson Freeman’s decision on the insurance was poorly written to match her desired outcome, and it would be easily and quickly overturned if it wasn’t I the 9th Circus.
Sadly, the response to Bruen shows that progressives are prepared to ignore the Supreme Court too. What avenues are available to SCotUS to enforce their rulings?
We The People.
But damn, I’m still paying off my big screen tv.
Gun control political theater? Why I never could have guessed!
Insurance. I carry insurance to cover any liability for injuries or damages etc. Pretty standard for insurance coverage of homesteaders or farmers.
Now, I carry said liability coverage out of common sense reasons. Someone files suit against you, legitimate or frivolous, and you could lose more than you have. A little extra insurance is cheap against the loss of home and property.
Now, this is voluntary purchasing of insurance coverage. Government mandating of coverage has never been all that successful. Mandatory liability insurance has not done much good in forcing auto owners into keeping insurance coverage. If it had, we would not have to have uninsured motorist coverage. And that mandate is on what is considered a privilege, not a right. Being forced to purchase a product or service is nothing but extortion and theft.
“Being forced to purchase a product or service is nothing but extortion and theft.”
When the government creates demand through force of law,, without interfering on the supply side equally, that is corruption. Invasive corruption at that.
If it interferes on both sides, that is likely socialism, but at least it keeps prices under control.
Restated, I HATE mandatory insurance.
“Being forced to purchase a product or service is nothing but extortion and theft.”
Further, when government through force of law, creates demand without interfering on the supply side, it distorts prices, creating an inherently corrupt situation.
If buying beer becomes mandatory. it is safe to say that quality will go down, and prices will go up.
“Being forced to purchase a product or service is nothing but extortion and theft.”
Then don’t. Self-insure. In most states with required liability insurance, there is an option to post a surety bond in lieu of an automobile policy.
BTW, the law is called a “financial responsibility” law. It doesn’t protect you — it’s to assure that you can pay for someone else’s damages/injuries. If you can’t, you shouldn’t be allowed to use the public roadways.
Are you opposed to financial institutions requiring you to insure a vehicle or house on which they have a lien?
License Registration and Insurance.
If you dont have all three it’s off to prison American Satans.
§ 241
18 U.S. Code § 241 – Conspiracy against Rights
If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
Unless there’s some sort of widespread, concerted pushback on the part of normal people against these “progressives,” they’re going to continue to shove their policies down our throats – SCOTUS or any other court decision to the contrary be damned. As Jim Clyburn once said: “…the Constitution means what WE say it means…”
Unfortunately, their control over the government bureaucracies, Big Tech, the “education” industry, Big Media, and the voting system is so pervasive that it almost precludes the ability to organize an effective resistance.
Not to be a Debbie Downer, but it sure looks like we’ve already reached that tipping point where the government ceased being the servant of the People and is now our master.
I’d like to know where the Judge that upheld this obviously colorable statute learned the law. Requiring an American to pay a fee in order to exercise a right that is secured by the U.S. Constitution is unconstitutional (re: Murdock v Pennsylvania, 319 US 105 [1943]). Insurance is NOT free, it is therefore a State/municipal required fee. All of the States are thereby forbidden from requiring Americans to pay, directly to the State, or indirectly to an insurance company, any fee in order to exercise their right to keep and bear Arms. (Murdock’s precedent should also apply to forbid any sales tax on Firearms an Ammo.)
We need insurance against government cocksuckers!
“another key part of the law: a yearly fee paid out by firearm owners to a nonprofit that helps combat gun-related violence.” In other words, an anti-gun group, probably Demanding Moms Against Everything or some similar hate group that considers all gun owners evil.
A law forcing gun owners to donate money to an anti-gun group is like a law forcing blacks to donate money to the KKK, or a law forcing Jews to donate money to the Nazi party. I can see why they’re allowing a 1st Amendment challenge against this, because it’s “forced speech,” which is unconstitutional.