San Jose to require liability insurance for gun owners

Lived there (actually Campbell) but would frequent the closest LGS in San Jose. Always felt bad for his crew, all family members, as the restrictions put on firearm owners and LGS in general. Great store, did what they could to accommodate customers. One day, walked in and everything was on sale. Was told they gave up, moving to Texas. In my opinion, that's the end game for these states/cities, make it seriously difficult to run a LGS, they give up and bam, fewer places to buy firearms and ammo.
 
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This just shows that some of the crap in the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles has infiltrated the brains of the San Jose Council.
 
With all the responses, I am surprised that no one has mentioned car insurance. The vast majority of us are legally required to have liability insurance on our cars because a small percentage of car owners get into trouble that harms others. What is the difference?
 
The vast majority of us are legally required to have liability insurance on our cars because a small percentage of car owners get into trouble that harms others. What is the difference?
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What's the difference? it may seem subtle, but its fundamental. You are not being taxed or required to buy insurance if you own a car.

Those fees are incurred as payment for operating that car on public highways. You have a Constitutional right to own property (the car, in this case), and you have a Constitutional right to travel, but you don't have a Constitutional right to operate a car on a public road. For that, you need a license, and everything else that goes with it. Car registration, taxes, fees, insurance of various kinds, etc.

You can own a car, on your own property and never need to pay the govt any fees or even have a license, PROVIDED you don't drive it on public roads or property.

This is not even CLOSE to taxing you and requiring special insurance because you OWN a gun. And that is what we are told they want to do.

Also I hear they want all gun sales video taped. Not sure what that's supposed to accomplish that the written records do not....

I expect their next move to be requiring gun owners to wear a yellow star or pink triangle or some other symbol so they can be readily identified on the street....

Waffenfrei isn't all that much different than Judenfrei, in principle... to me.....:rolleyes:
 
cjwils said:
The vast majority of us are legally required to have liability insurance on our cars because a small percentage of car owners get into trouble that harms others. What is the difference?
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Typically your car insurance will only cover unintentional injury and exclude injury flowing from intentional conduct. There is a public policy in most states that prohibits one from insuring against his own intentional behavior; the sense is that it could make injurious behavior more likely if the wrongdoer is insulated from the financial consequence. The behavior for which San Jose seeks restitution in the form of a firearms tax is nearly always intentional.

If you read your state's financial responsibility laws, you are likely to find that it requires that you have resources from which to pay a judgment up to a limit (I think Ohio is $25,000) or an insurance policy in that amount. It probably doesn't require you to enter a contract with an insurance company.
 
zukiphile said:
Typically your car insurance will only cover unintentional injury and exclude injury flowing from intentional conduct. There is a public policy in most states that prohibits one from insuring against his own intentional behavior; the sense is that it could make injurious behavior more likely if the wrongdoer is insulated from the financial consequence. The behavior for which San Jose seeks restitution in the form of a firearms tax is nearly always intentional.
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Indeed, if I remember correctly this was what torpedoed the NRA's Carry Guard CCW insurance program.


From the article linked in the opening post:

The San Jose City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to draft an ordinance that would order gun owners in the city to obtain insurance and pay an annual fee to subsidize police responses, ambulances, medical treatment and other municipal expenses related to shootings, injuries and deaths.
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I don't see how that can possibly survive a court challenge. It has to fail under the equal protection analysis. If MY guns don't shoot anyone, why do I have to pay a "fee" to subsidize first responders while my neighbors who don't own guns don't have to pay the fee?
 
The criminalization of gun ownership . . .

The subtext here is the criminalization of gun ownership. Many people, even well educated people, see no good reason to own a gun. They believe that gun owners must be up to no good. It's like a phobia.

Makes me crazy.

Prof Young
 
If a criminal enters your home and in the commission of his intended theft, shoots and injures you, causing you to go to the hospital, where, in this country in the present time is a municipality responsible for your medical charges? Your medical insurance covers all the expenses they list, with the exception of police expenses, which is the bottom line in this aura of police defunding since they can't make it obvious they are moving back to the future.

This is a tax directed at a specific portion of the population that provides a benefit to community members as well, who don't own guns, the supposed benefit being it reduces a general tax on all community members for the same portion of the city's budgeted expenses.

I can't see how it would pass muster in court. But, then again, California is the land of fruits and nuts.
 
If MY guns don't shoot anyone, why do I have to pay a "fee" to subsidize first responders while my neighbors who don't own guns don't have to pay the fee?
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that would seem a valid point, HOWEVER, again I refer to property ownership and school taxes. It varies a bit, but where I live, if I own property, I get assessed a tax (one of many) to pay for public school whether I have children who go or went to school, or NOT.

A neighbor who rents his home, has six kids, who ride the bus, eat school lunches, and often actually enter the school building :rolleyes: doesn't pay a penny in school taxes under our system in many places.

I don't see how this is different in base principle, taxing someone who has "something" to pay for benefits and services for those who don't have that "something" and so, don't pay the tax.

And yet, its done all the time, all over the country. How is that fair, equal treatment, under the law???
 
I'm not a fan of government run schools, but I'll take a swing at this.

I don't see how this is different in base principle, taxing someone who has "something" to pay for benefits and services for those who don't have that "something" and so, don't pay the tax.
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The way this works in my state, a school board is a governmental unit. It's limited in scope, but if you live with a school board's district (which are not always perfectly co-extensive with municipal limits), you are subject to its authority, including it's taxing authority. Real estate taxes are assessed against everyone who owns real estate in that district. There is no link conceptually between paying the school levy as part of your real estate tax bill and benefitting from government educational services; it isn't a payment for service. No voter in the district is required to own land, so it isn't the right that is taxed; it's the land.

The San Jose proposal is a direct taxation of the exercise of the right and the legislative history that follows this idea will include language suggesting that the council sees this as restitution for the costs of gun possession. The tax isn't imposed on everyone within the jurisdiction, only those who exercise their right.
 
zukiphile said:
The San Jose proposal is a direct taxation of the exercise of the right and the legislative history that follows this idea will include language suggesting that the council sees this as restitution for the costs of gun possession. The tax isn't imposed on everyone within the jurisdiction, only those who exercise their right.
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Interesting theory.

So the .gov says, "Let's create a nightmare bureaucratic system that applies only to gun owners, 99 percent of whom are law abiding citizens and don't need any administration, and then we'll charge them an 'administrative fee' to cover the costs of administering the bureaucracy that doesn't accomplish anything because the 1 percent of gun owners who commit the crimes don't register their guns with the bureaucracy anyway."

Does that about sum it up?
 
jdc said:
Yes...How about passing a law prohibiting murder and then apply a tax/fee to anyone who breaks this law?
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A more direct analog would be to tax everyone who owns a knife, because people are sometimes wounded or killed by knives and the police and medics usually respond to those incidents.

Oh ... wait. Don't we already pay taxes to pay for the police and the EMTs? Same applies to gun owners. They're already paying taxes to pay for first responders, so this new "fee" amounts to unequal double taxation. The county can't call it a "user fee," because law abiding gun owners typically don't create "gun crime" incidents, and don't call the police unless they have just shot an assailant -- in which case it should be the assailant who pays for the first responders, not the victim.
 
44AMP said: "A neighbor who rents his home, has six kids, who ride the bus, eat school lunches, and often actually enter the school building doesn't pay a penny in school taxes under our system in many places."

I think the owner of the rental property pays school tax on the basis of the property. That expense is reflected in the rent charge, so, in effect, renters are paying school taxes.
 
Aguila Blanca said:
So the .gov says, "Let's create a nightmare bureaucratic system that applies only to gun owners, 99 percent of whom are law abiding citizens and don't need any administration, and then we'll charge them an 'administrative fee' to cover the costs of administering the bureaucracy that doesn't accomplish anything because the 1 percent of gun owners who commit the crimes don't register their guns with the bureaucracy anyway."

Does that about sum it up?
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I think that's the model for the firearms part of BATFE. I'm not an alcohol prohibitionist, but I understand that alcohol has some social and medical costs at the margins; yet I don't need a background check that would disqualify me from buying liquor if I had a DV conviction. Tobacco surely involves some very serious costs, but aside from the high price the greatest sanction against smokers involves treating them like lepers.

Forearms may be the most benign matter they regulate, but firearm purchasers are treated like taxable lab rats.
 
I think the owner of the rental property pays school tax on the basis of the property. That expense is reflected in the rent charge, so, in effect, renters are paying school taxes.
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You can look at it that way, but the renter isn't directly paying the tax, he's paying the landlord. And that landlord is getting the same rent from a family with kids who go to school as he is from the retired couple or the single person with no kids.

i think the principle is the same, everyone who owns "A" is being taxed for the benefit of a group they may or may not belong to. Some situations may allow the taxpayer to pass along the cost, others do not.

The gun owner tax being proposed is different. San Jose govt is attempting to "double dip" into gun owner's wallets. Gun owners already pay for fire, medical and police services the same way everyone else does. Now, the San Jose govt wants to charge them extra to supposedly pay for those same services again, because somehow, they think the people who's guns shoot nobody are responsible for the actions of others, and should pay for the cost of their illegal acts.

Using that FLAWED logic shows a spectacular lack of judgement and common sense, to me, and people who think that way should not be the ones we elect to manage our govt.
 
44 AMP said:
The gun owner tax being proposed is different. San Jose govt is attempting to "double dip" into gun owner's wallets. Gun owners already pay for fire, medical and police services the same way everyone else does. Now, the San Jose govt wants to charge them extra to supposedly pay for those same services again, because somehow, they think the people who's guns shoot nobody are responsible for the actions of others, and should pay for the cost of their illegal acts.
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Agreed. See post #33.

Double dipping is double dipping, regardless of how they try to "justify" it.
 
44AMP said:
The gun owner tax being proposed is different. San Jose govt is attempting to "double dip" into gun owner's wallets. Gun owners already pay for fire, medical and police services the same way everyone else does. Now, the San Jose govt wants to charge them extra to supposedly pay for those same services again, because somehow, they think the people who's guns shoot nobody are responsible for the actions of others, and should pay for the cost of their illegal acts.
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That's why I stressed the restitution element in the council's reasoning. I don't know that it is an argument that surely disposes of this whole issue, but restitution is a judicial remedy. It involves the due process of evidence that you caused the damage for which you must pay. When a legislature does it, there is no such process. This is like taxing everyone who weighs over 200 pounds because obesity increases medical costs.

44AMP said:
Using that FLAWED logic shows a spectacular lack of judgement and common sense, to me, and people who think that way should not be the ones we elect to manage our govt.
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I don't know who said this, but it reminds me of the line -- people who are too wise to enter government are doomed to be governed by those who aren't.
 
zukiphile said:
That's why I stressed the restitution element in the council's reasoning. I don't know that it is an argument that surely disposes of this whole issue, but restitution is a judicial remedy. It involves the due process of evidence that you caused the damage for which you must pay. When a legislature does it, there is no such process. This is like taxing everyone who weighs over 200 pounds because obesity increases medical costs.
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In this context, it's not even an oxymoron. From Merriam-Webster on-line:

Definition of restitution

1 : an act of restoring or a condition of being restored: such as
a : a restoration of something to its rightful owner
b : a making good of or giving an equivalent for some injury

2 : a legal action serving to cause restoration of a previous state
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"Restitution," in other words, is traditionally a requirement for someone to pay back some or all of an amount he or she gained through illicit means. The concept or requiring an entire class of people to pay "restitution" for acts which they not only didn't commit but which have not even been committed could only have come from the same minds that call asking (or forcing) people to sell to the government at a fraction of the real value guns which the government never sold, a "gun buy-back" program.

It really is time for someone to release a sequel to Edwin Newman's books, Strictly Speaking and A Civil Tongue.
 
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