A national gun rights group sent San Jose city leaders a cease-and-desist letter on Wednesday, just two weeks after the city council approved calling for an annual gun fee and mandating gun liability insurance.
The July 14 letter from the National Foundation for Gun Rights sent to Mayor Sam Liccardo and council members puts the city on notice that the group will sue if the city moves forward with plans for a citywide gun ordinance.
The organization is the legal division of the National Association for Gun Rights, a Second Amendment advocacy group that considers itself the “conservative alternative” to the National Rifle Association.
The foundation maintains the city would violate the Second Amendment by imposing a tax on “a select group of law-abiding citizens” exercising their right to keep and bear arms.
“A right that you have to pay a tax to exercise is not a right at all,” said Hannah Hill, spokesperson for the foundation. “You would not dream of imposing a tax to attend a church or to disseminate or read a newspaper, which are protected by the First Amendment.”
Executive Director Dudley Brown called the ordinance a “full-frontal assault” on gun owners “by the gun control zealots running the city of San Jose.” The foundation sees the ordinance as unfair to law-abiding citizens, Brown said.
Liccardo, who met Monday with President Joe Biden and other mayors from around the country to discuss ways to stop gun violence, disagreed with the gun rights group’s assertions.
“In the realm of sensible gun regulation, the gun industry and their lawyers ensure that no good deed goes unlitigated,” Liccardo said in an email. “I suppose that I should not be surprised that they have threatened to sue the city before they've even seen a single word in the ordinance.”
Rachel Davis, press secretary for Liccardo, said the city will continue to draft the ordinance.
The “gun harm reduction” proposals approved by the San Jose City Council at the end of June include a mandate for gun insurance; impounding guns from those who do not comply with insurance mandates and other laws; and recording all gun purchases to mitigate gun straw purchases, among many other proposals.
A draft ordinance is expected to come back to the city council for a vote in September.
“In the realm of sensible gun regulation, the gun industry and their lawyers ensure that no good deed goes unlitigated,” — Sam Liccardo
“Sensible gun regulation.” Let’s vet that claim for accuracy.
That it is a gun-related regulation is beyond question, but exactly who will it regulate? Are we to believe that the street thugs who possess and use firearms despite existing prohibitions on their persons (convicted felons, parolees, probationers, illegal aliens) as well as prohibitions on their firearms (stolen, unlawfully manufactured, illegally purchased, etc.) will quake in their boots and comply when confronted by Mayor Liccardo’s insurance mandate? Laughable, to say the least. As for those responsible for mass shootings, lunatics lacking in concern for every restraint known to man, to think they’d be affected by the “regulation” requires its own brand of lunacy.
That it is a regulation is a given, but because it will not suppress the unlawful behavior of those responsible for violent acts, and it can’t suppress the already law-abiding, it doesn’t really regulate (verb: control) anything. Instead, it is merely a regulation (noun: directive) that functions exactly as does a tax, a compulsory contribution to the government.
That leaves us with “sensible,” and the question: how can something that cannot do what it says it will do (reduce gun violence), but will do what it denies doing (tax the public), be considered sensible? The answer is it can’t. The only benefit to Sam Liccardo’s big idea is that it exposes to all clear thinkers how small and unimpressive is the man’s brain.
Sam Liccardo is a man desperate to move up the political ladder but incapable of doing it by relying on his own abilities. His stupid gun insurance law represents his frantic thrust of a towline to the Democratic regime, begging it to recognize him as a fellow traveler, one with no respect for anything but the acquisition of political power, and hoping it will pull him along his way. He’s Eric Swalwell sans spy chick and chutzpah, Kamala Harris without the pants suit and diversionary chuckle, Nancy Pelosi with smoother skin and larger panties.
I’m guessing that Mr. (not my mayor) Liccardo doesn’t understand what a right is. Which is funny since he is a lawyer that came from Harvard. He must have skipped class that day.
Do I need insurance for my free speech too? Far more deaths have resulted from just speech; wars, protests and riots have tolled millions of deaths. So let’s be fair tax that too!
If you don’t pay the tax you don’t get the right. Sounds like they typical Democrats pay to play policy.
In the end he knows it’s 100% unconstitutional, but he “wants to make a statement”, just like his buddy Gavin did by declaring all handguns illegal in SF.
Good luck! LOL
“Common-sense,” “reasonable,” “sensible,” all sugar-coat lies
The same is true for the routine deliberately evasive language:
“Gun safety,” “gun violence,” “gun reform”
How about honesty? “We have gun phobia and as modern, especially ‘progressive,’ liberals, we don’t care about the Constitution any more than anything else that’s in our way. We’ll do whatever we can or can try to get what we want, and we’ll lie about it, too, if it helps us, including about the Constitution.”
This isn’t going anywhere.
It is going to get tossed out in Court.
This is no different than a poll tax. We no longer allow the government to make people pay in order to exercise their right to vote. The right to keep and bear arms is the second amendment to our federal constitution and the right to vote is the fifteenth.
City Council Introduces Bastard-Prevention Ordinance
San Jose (PhakeNewsNet)
In recognition of the enormous public and private costs associated with the city’s growing population of bastard children, the city will begin requiring unmarried fertile adults to purchase liability insurance and pay an annual fee to off-set the costs associated with the excessively needy and disproportionately anti-social offspring of sexually irresponsible residents.
The program, conceptualized by the mayor and supported by a mountain of welfare, crime, and prison data, is intended to compensate crime victims, relieve the tax burden, and promote the institution of marriage.
“We won’t magically end the carnage caused by bastards, but we will stop paying for it,” said the mayor.
Critics, including representatives from the NAACP, La Raza, Catholic Charities, Budweiser, and an ad hoc committee of white trash residents, are calling the new regulation a “classic case of bait-and-switch,” citing the Democratic Party’s six decades-long promotion of the hedonistic and irresponsible lifestyle.
“They want to penalize us for being what they made us,” commented one resident, who asked only to be identified as a committed progressive. “This has all the earmarks of a scheme to let the squares, the rich, and the Mormons off the hook,” he added.
Although the price of insurance has yet to be determined, social scientists familiar with the annual carnage caused by bastards estimate monthly policies will be in the neighborhood of one thousand American dollars, or twenty thousand pesos.
Very funny, Phu Tan Elli. And right on topic. An excellent allegory. I wish Hunter S. Thompson was still alive and could take your post and punch it up with a Gonzo Journalism slant.
In order to cover the “gun violence cost” in San Jose, the annual fee might be as high as $3,000 per household that owns a gun. (Assuming everything complies) ?
I am not sure that the beta males and cranberry cocktail sipping sorority sisters who will be writing this law will be able to produce anything viable. They will get wrapped around their intersectional axels.