San Jose drafts law for gun insurance
A month after a gunman killed nine workers at a rail yard in San Jose, the city is taking steps to become the first in the nation to require firearms owners to buy insurance and pay fees to relieve taxpayers of the costs of responding to gun violence.
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.
The amount of the fee hasn’t been determined, but Mayor Sam Liccardo said Wednesday it would probably be “a couple dozen dollars” and would not be charged to those who could not afford it. He said insurers have advised the city that including gun coverage on their policies would add little or nothing to typical premium costs.
The Pacific Institute on Research and Evaluation has issued a preliminary report estimating that gunrelated homicides, suicides and other shootings cost San Jose around $63 million annually. The city will await the institute’s final report, due this fall, before calculating its fees.
“The Second Amendment certainly protects the right of every citizen to own a gun,” Liccardo told reporters. “It does not mandate that taxpayers subsidize that right.”
A progun group immediately promised a court challenge.
Both the insurance mandate and the fees violate the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, said the Firearms Policy Coalition. It said the fees would also “put lawful access to firearms out of reach of poor and underprivileged individuals in highcrime neighborhoods.”
But Stanford Law Professor John Donohue said the right to possess guns does not exempt owners from the resulting financial costs to the government, as long as the city is careful in calculating them.
“I have the right to swing my arm freely but I should pay if it hits my neighbor in the face,” Donohue said. “With 400,000 guns stolen every year, the good guys do a lot to arm the bad guys, so they should pay for their contribution to the mayhem.”
Attorney Allison Anderman of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence said the San Jose mandates seem comparable to fees associated with gun background checks and permits that courts have upheld.
On the other hand, said UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler, “there are some potential problems with requiring insurance for the exercise of a constitutional right, and I’d guess the Supreme Court would ultimately be hostile to this measure.”
Liccardo said San Jose should refrain from spending any of the fee revenue until legal challenges to the ordinance were resolved.
On May 26, Samuel Cassidy, a 57yearold worker at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority light rail yard in San Jose, fatally shot nine coworkers before killing himself. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Bay Area history.
While the San Jose City Council voted to make the insurance payments and fees mandatory, the city cannot directly contact gun owners to enforce compliance because it has no gun registry or other means of locating the owners, Liccardo said.
Instead, said Rachel Davis, a spokesperson for the mayor, gun owners would be expected to learn of the new requirements through news coverage, social media and City Council proceedings. They would then pay the fees through a city website, increase their insurance coverage and print compliance forms to carry with them. Under the ordinance, police who encounter gun owners lacking proof of compliance will be authorized to confiscate the weapons.
“Crooks aren’t going to follow this law,” Liccardo told reporters. “When those crooks are confronted by police and a gun is identified, and if they haven’t paid the fee or insurance, it’s a lawful basis for seizure of that gun.”
Likewise, he said, when officers respond to a domestic violence call, they ask if anyone has a gun and, under the ordinance, will seize it if the owner has not complied with the new requirements.
“We can get to guns the moment that the risk is greatest,” the mayor said.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Councilmember Maya Esparza said she supported the liability insurance and fee requirements but was concerned about the prospect of warrantless searches on gun owners, which she called a “giant red flag.”
In response, Liccardo said gun owners found in violation of the ordinances would have their weapons seized, but that police officers would “not engage in extensive searches beyond their ordinary duties.”