San Jose, CA — After the Garlic Festival shooting left three people dead in a Gun Free Zone, San Jose has done the smart thing and banned Gun Free Zones.
Oh wait. No, they didn’t.
Instead, Sam Liccardo, Mayor of San Jose—the 10th largest city in America—came out on Monday and proposed that gun owners either carry liability insurance or they pay a fee to cover the city’s costs due to gun crime.
Mayor Liccardo made the argument that gun owners carrying insurance was like car owners carrying insurance: you can incentivize gun owners to buy safes, etc by lowering their premiums.
He says that he’s been speaking with other mayors and city councils that are considering the same or similar proposals, and the measure is up for a vote by the City Council within a month.
What a lunatic.
We don’t have a Constitutionally protected right to drive a car.
We DO have a Constitutionally protected right to bear arms which shall not be infringed!
Not only that, but are they going to apply this logic to other things that cost the taxpayers money?
Are they going to make all Mexicans, even those who have immigrated here legally, pay a fee to cover the cost of rising crime by illegal Mexicans?
Are they going to make all people who eat food pay an extra tax to cover the extra health care costs of the obese?
Are they going to make all parent’s pay a tax for having children to help cover the rising costs of foster care, even though their kids aren’t in state foster care?
That’s exactly what this proposal would do: punish the law-abiding gun owners for the crimes of criminals.
It is not the business of the government to put a price tag on our Constitutional rights. We don’t pay a fee to have free speech, we don’t pay for an insurance policy to not be subject to illegal searches and seizures, or any other insane idea.
If Mayor Liccardo wanted to help innocent people be safer from gun crime, he would eliminate Gun Free Zones in the city of San Jose.
Until then, he’s a petty tyrant.