San Jose's Insurance Requirement Is Privatized Gun ControlPoliticians deputize the private sector to restrict rights protected from the government.
By J.D. Tuccille
January 31, 2022
Deputizing private parties to restrict liberty has become popular among politicians constrained by constitutional protections for individual rights. They get to target personal freedom without explicitly restricting anything, like a bratty kid waving his hands around a sibling's face while chanting "I'm not touching you!" The latest such example is the San Jose, California, city government, which insists that it is "constitutionally compliant" in requiring gun owners to purchase liability insurance and to pay an "annual gun harm reduction fee" to exercise a right specifically protected by the Second Amendment.
"Tonight San José became the first city in the United States to enact an ordinance to require gun owners to purchase liability insurance, and to invest funds generated from fees paid by gun owners into evidence-based initiatives to reduce gun violence and gun harm," San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo boasted in a January 25 statement. "Thank you to my council colleagues who continue to show their commitment to reducing gun violence and its devastation in our community. I am deeply grateful also to our advocacy and legal partners with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP, EveryTown, Moms Demand Action, SAFE, the Gifford Law Alliance and many others who work tirelessly to help us craft a constitutionally compliant path to mitigate the unnecessary suffering from gun harm in our community. I look forward to supporting the efforts of others to replicate these initiatives across the nation."
There's a lot to unravel in that smug statement, including the assumption that firearms ownership imposes costs and not benefits, as well as the assertion that requiring people to carry liability insurance and pay fees to the government in order to exercise a right specifically enumerated in the Second Amendment is somehow constitutionally compliant. None of what Liccardo says is well-grounded in reality. But he's especially sensitive to the idea that imposing costs on gun owners is an example of government overreach.
"This isn't actually governmental regulation," Liccardo insisted to NPR last week. "This is private sector regulation. This is insurance companies. Insurance companies have been regulating safety of automobiles for five decades, and as a result, we all have seen per mile deaths drop dramatically over the last five decades because we have air bags and anti-lock brakes and so forth that insurance companies incentivize drivers to go buy."
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Source:
https://reason.com/2022/01/31/san-joses-insurance-requirement-is-privatized-gun-control/
