We learned about this crackpot plan previously, but it looks like they’re actually going to go ahead and do it. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and members of the City Council are poised to institute a policy to charge “fees” to legal gun owners to “compensate” taxpayers for the costs associated with gun violence. This thinly veiled plan to make the cost of owning a firearm prohibitive for more people also includes orders for gun seizures by the police for anyone unwilling to submit to these ransom demands. This plan was obviously rushed through without much thought because they won’t even know how much they’ll need to charge people until at least the fall. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Mayor Sam Liccardo praised the groundbreaking measures and said gun owners that do not comply with the new rules shouldn’t have guns.

“We won’t magically end gun violence, but we stop paying for it,” Liccardo said in a statement ahead of the vote.

The policies come one month after gunman Samuel Cassidy fatally shot nine coworkers at the VTA light rail yard before turning the gun on himself, the deadliest mass shooting in Bay Area history.

It’s hard to even know where to begin when picking apart this nonsense. The measure is supposedly being enacted in response to a mass shooting that took place last month. The “costs” associated with that shooting shouldn’t be borne by the taxpayers according to Liccardo. But it’s obvious that the only person responsible for that shooting and its associated costs was Samuel Cassidy. Handing the bill to a group of people who have probably never fired a shot in anger in their lives is simply insane and this can’t possibly hold up under a court challenge.

One sign that this measure was rushed through without much thought is that Liccardo is pushing it through without even knowing how much money he expects to extract from gun owners in his city. There is a “gun harm study” currently being conducted to determine the costs, but the results won’t be ready until the fall. One previous estimate put the cost at $63 million per year. Doe he really think he can extract that much money just from the gun owners in San Jose?

Another fly in the ointment is that San Jose has no gun registry available to identify all of the people who would be hit with this new fee. Having the state or federal government release that sort of information to a municipal government just for the purpose of imposing a tax would be highly unusual, to say the least, if not illegal. Of course, the Mayor is also talking about having the police conduct searches to see if weapons are located in people’s homes. I simply can’t wait to see that sort of activity challenged in court.

When the inevitable challenges arrive, this may not even need to be handled as a Second Amendment case. Taxes and fees are supposed to be applied evenly and fairly to everyone. Singling out people who are exercising one of their constitutional rights for a “special” tax or fee that none of the rest of the citizens have to pay should be flatly unconstitutional. We’ll put a pin in this story and revisit it if Liccardo actually manages to get this put on the books.