San Jose to tax gun owners, will confiscate firearms for noncompliance
Gun owners in San Jose, California, will soon face a yearly tax and be required to carry additional insurance after their city council voted unanimously Tuesday evening to impose the new measures.
The forthcoming fee for gun ownership in the city has not yet been determined, but officials said that anyone found to be in noncompliance will have their weapons confiscated.
The city council’s aim is to try to recoup the cost of responding to gun incidents such as shootings and deaths. According to the Pacific Council on Research and Evaluation, which studied the issue and sent a representative to testify before the panel, gun-related incidents cost the city roughly $63 million every year in the way of paying for police officers, medics and other expenses, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The people who will pay the tax and buy the insurance to remain legal are not the people doing the shootings.
And the people doing the shooting are not going to get licenses and buy insurance.
This will probably survive legal challenge in California.
This has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with tormenting gun owners.
The government would never use gun registration to seize your firearms. /sarc
As Joe Huffman says, “Never let anyone tell you nobody wants to take away your guns.”
It’s the only purpose gun registration serves; even gun prohibitionists who sold registration to the public as a fabulous crime-solving tool … cannot cite a single crime substantively solved by consulting the registry. And they have every reason to find one.
Despite its uselessness in solving crimes, in every place with registration somebody eventually files a proposal that would use it to seize guns from peaceable gun owners. Whether the proposal passes or not is another issue, but invariably some @$$hole proposes it.
Infringement by any other name…still reeks like the steaming bucket of shit that it is.
What does a city look like when you’ve driven out all the legal gun owners?
London, San Francisco … Take your pick.
Chicongo?
Chiraq
I don’t see this standing up to a proper legal challenge.
@Charon: Ah, but this is California. The shakier the legal grounds, the _more_ likely it will be upheld.
Eventually, it won’t. California has – at least for the time being – state preemption
So when they tell you you dont have insurance or paid the fee say- “what do you expect? Im a criminal”
Federal courts won’t let it stand.
Ninth Circus. ‘Nuff said.
Unless they get Judge Benitez, it’ll probably be upheld.
If they do get Judge Benitez, he’ll overturn it, the city will appeal, and Benitez’s ruling will be stayed pending panel review, where the tax will probably be upheld.
Because the 2nd Amendment doesn’t mean much in the Ninth.
What they need to do instead, is frame part of their challenge to the law as a 5th Amendment issue (which liberals respect more than the 2nd).
If you don’t pay the tax, you’re a criminal, and they know because you’re registered. Haynes v. U.S. found that a criminal cannot be forced to register firearms he’s not allowed to have, as such registration amounts to self-incrimination. Yea, it’s a bit of a stretch, but the courts historically like the 5th Amendment, so it might have more traction.
They might be able to throw in a 14th Amendment “equal protection” violation in there, too.
Bottom line: Don’t depend on the 2nd Amendment meaning anything in the Ninth Circus. Take the “shotgun” approach and invoke as many Constitutional questions as you can.
Also go after the 14th’s equal protection clause, and the non-discrimination portion of the civil rights act, i.e. if gun owners need to be taxed to pay for criminal acts committed with firearms, tax restaurants for crimes committed with kitchen knives, tax automobile owners for criminal acts committed with a car, tax gas BBQ owners for improvised explosive devices made from propane tanks.
Tax City Government employees to pay all the Civil Suit judgments against the police, licensing and inspections, and EMS. Minneapolis has had a $25 Million and a $27 Million payouts in the last few years, along with the usual $100,000 here and $1 Million there. The Minnesota Municipal Mutual Insurance Fund (not the actual name, but that is what it does) has long ago washed their hands of them, and a lot of other cities too.
California and her cities once again refusing to accept Col. Cooper’s age-old wisdom: if you remove all the guns you will still have a crime problem, but if you remove all the criminals you cannot have a gun problem.
*headdesk*
And the ones doing the shooting are just turned loose anyways once they’re caught.
This is creating a perverse incentive to not register, since a felon cannot be compelled to register a firearm for 5th amendment reasons… Should be the same as a legal gun owner but we all know it’s not. You have more legal protection by being a criminal.
Of course IANAL.
This does not sound constitutional to me.