U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The San Jose City Council has approved “sweeping gun control measures” including video recording of transactions and a requirement gun owners purchase “gun liability insurance,” but remarks by at least one council member suggest they paid no attention to the facts of the mass shooting incident that led to the restrictions.
Already, the California-based Firearms Policy Coalition is hinting at a court challenge, according to the San Jose Spotlight.
The incident that precipitated the adoption of what rights activists are already saying is an “extremist” set of new restrictions was the May 26 shooting of nine people at the San Jose VTA rail yard. The killer was identified as a 57-year-old VTA employee who had legally purchased and registered three 9mm pistols, according to FBI Special Agent in Charge Craig Fair, quoted by the Spotlight.
Yet Councilman Dave Cohen was quoted immediately afterward, talking about preventing straw purchases, which the video recording requirement is supposed to prevent. No straw purchase was involved in any way.
Further, the killer—who took his own life—used so-called “high capacity magazines,” which are already illegal in California.
Translation: The state’s existing prohibition did not prevent the gunman from obtaining the contraband magazines.
According to KNTV, the Bay Area NBC affiliate, the new requirement for gun owners to pay an unspecified fee is designed “to offset the damage done by gun violence.”
Translation: Gun owners will be financially penalized for crimes they didn’t commit.
The city acknowledges it will face a court challenge, but officials expressed confidence they will prevail.
Anti-gun Democrat Mayor Sam Liccardo told KNTV “San Jose would become the first city in the United States to require every gun owner to have liability insurance for their firearms.” He justified the fee by asserting, “The 2nd Amendment protects Americans’ rights to own guns, but it does not require that every other taxpayer pay for that right.”
KNTV noted the gun control scheme was “first proposed in 2019 after the Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooting.” But a check of the facts in that case once again reveals San Jose officials weren’t paying attention.
The Gilroy gunman was a 19-year-old who had grown up in the area but had been living in Walker Lake, Nev. He purchased the rifle used in the shooting from a store in Fallon, Nev. The rifle, an AK-47 variant called the WASR-10 is prohibited in California but legal in Nevada. The perpetrator brought that firearm into the state illegally, along with large capacity magazines prohibited by California law.
Translation: The Gilroy case is a textbook example of California gun control failure, which the San Jose City Council evidently chose to ignore while adopting the new gun control restrictions.
According to KNTV, “The plan also includes everything from bans on ghost guns and assault-style weapons to gun buyback programs and required video recording of all gun sales — something that’s sure to see legal challenges.”
What might those challenges cover? Is videotaping a retail transaction involving the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right an invasion of privacy? Is a prohibition on so-called “ghost guns” and “assault-style weapons” unconstitutional? How can the city “buy back” guns it never owned in the first place, and from whence will the money come for such a program? (If taxpayers can’t be expected to “pay for the right to own guns,” how can they be expected to pay for “buying them back?”)
The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) boldly declared they are putting “Government officials on notice: if you ban constitutionally protected firearms or conduct, we are coming for you.”
In a statement published in its entirety by KNTV, the FPC rebutted each of the city’s points in its gun control package.
According to the San Jose Mercury-News, FPC called the video requirement “Big Brother-style omniveillance.”
In a statement, the group observed, “This Orwellian requirement would be rightly universally opposed were the City to impose similar video and audio-recording mandates in mosques and churches, book stores, or abortion clinics.”
The question nobody has answered because apparently, the media hasn’t bothered to ask, is whether any of these gun control measures will prevent gun-related violent crime or murders. A look at the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2019—the most recent data available—suggests California gun control laws have been failing.
Table 20 of that report reveals California exceeded every other state in the number of homicides, with Texas the nearest runner-up.
With all of its gun control laws in place, California reported 1,679 slayings in 2019, which included 1,142 committed with firearms. More people were fatally stabbed (252) than were killed with rifles of any kind (34). This pattern prevails over the years with the annual FBI reports.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Free people will not comply. They will gather in mass and display their arms in open civil disobedience. There are not enough handcuffs, jail cells or beaurocrats to do anything about it, so long as people stand up for themselves rather than cower as sheep.
Amen!
en masse
Yes, otherwise it sounds like they’re gathering at church. And that’s not a bad thing to do. PTL !
Yes, damn autocorrect
If they use weapons of war against the populace, they will have signed their own “resignations”. That will unleash an unstoppable force.
This is an effort to control others, thru totalitarianism, so they themselves are not controlled. This repression leads to violence which leads to even more suppression which leads to even more violence and so on. The San Jose council is not composed of wise people.
not one of the things they claim is factually true. when people let their feelings over-rule their intellect they become unfit to hold public office. that is, 99% in the (d) party and a good percentage of (r)’s.
you have to deal with reality in order to govern morally, and they ain’t with that.
you cannot legislate evil or morality, if you could there would be no crime at all.
and you should not make law abiding citizens pay for the actions of criminals.
Once laws against murder, theft, assault, rape and other actions creating a victim are in place, all other laws are unnecessary and just infringements, as if someone will commit murder, they don’t care if it is a no gun zone, their weapon is banned, etc
“While San Jose’s mayor has proposed a number of unconstitutional gun restrictions, the only one that has thus far passed and is set to take effect applies only to gun dealers. It is, as the city calls it, an ordinance “regulating the sale, lease, and transfer of firearms and firearm ammunition in San Jose at retail.” It requires that firearms and ammunition retailers in the city obtain a new Firearm Business License, with the fee for that license yet to be determined. Dealers must train all sales staff to determine whether a given customer seeks to purchase the firearm for… Read more »
Keep us advised, counselor!
Thanks for reading AmmoLand News.
With their thought process in mind, can a fee be charged to Democrat voters for the damages done by Biden?
An interesting question!
Thanks for reading and sharing AmmoLand News.
“The Gilroy gunman was a 19-year-old who had grown up in the area but had been living in Walker Lake, Nev. He purchased the rifle used in the shooting from a store in Fallon, Nev.” Why did he buy the rifle from a *kitchen table FFL in Fallon which is an 80 minute drive when there are several real gun stores closer? Unless you live in way out in the boonies in NV there is a gun store nearby. If you live in a city with 20+k residents there is at least one that has a large inventory of EBR’s… Read more »
Here’s an idea whose time has come. SInce we now can set up video recording of incidents where citizens exercise their rights, let’s do that at the voting booth. Yep. Record the guy filing his filled out ballot. Make certain facial recognition software is enabled and active. That way when that dame dood drives accross town and tries to vote again, the system will fleg him and prevent the second ballot from being filed. Fair enough? And Scam Hose A is one of the more crooked cities in that crooked state with respect to voting. Has been for half a… Read more »
Every infringement on the 2nd amendment must be applied to all. They don’t like that? They claim those rights are unalienable? So is the 2nd!
Isnt it funny how the nra trips all over their big clown shoes taking credit for pro-2nd legislation they have nothing to do with, but total crickets chirping when anti-2nd stuff gets passed.
Nope,, not a mention of the mighty nra.
And just in case no one knows, walmart has been video taping every single gun transaction, nationwide, for decades now and they keep the record for i believe 10 years.