U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Nearly two weeks after a gunman fatally shot nine coworkers at a San Jose light rail yard, the mayor of Northern California’s most populous city is proposing first-of-its-kind gun safety restrictions that would require gun owners in the city to obtain insurance and pay an annual fee to cover the cost of gun violence,” CNN “reports.”
I put “reports” in quotation marks because even though the story is presented as news, it’s really an advocacy piece, the first telltale sign being the editorial assertion that these latest infringements have anything to do with “gun safety.” To give the pretext of “balance,” several paragraphs down in the article CNN quoted Gun Owners of California executive director Sam Parades raising preemption objectives, noting California law supposedly precludes cities from enacting their own “gun control” edicts. He’s right, of course, but laws can be changed by Democrat majorities. Besides, Liccardo’s going after bigger fish, “the Supreme Law of the Land.”
“The Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to own guns but does not require that every other taxpayer pays for that right,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo misdirects. “Requiring gun users to pay fees will help fund critical emergency medical and police response and reduce our taxpayers’ burdens.”
“The reality is the public taxpayers are footing the bill for those that choose to own guns,” CNN anchor Ana Cabrera dutifully quotes the mayor via Twitter. “It’s appropriate that if gun owners believe in the importance of this right then they pay for the costs of the guns incur on the public.”
“The reality is the public taxpayers are footing the bill for those that choose to own guns. It’s appropriate that if gun owners believe in the importance of this right then they pay for the costs of the guns incur on the public.” –San Jose Mayor @sliccardo on new proposals. pic.twitter.com/Ueo39KW3m1
— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) June 9, 2021
“Cost of gun violence” numbers have been used by the antis, generally presented with heartbreaking (and thus manipulative) anecdotes, for years, receiving a real boost in media attention with the publication of a Michael Bloomberg-funded “study” in February that somehow managed to completely avoid the subject of lives and costs saved because citizens were armed. And not to put too fine a point on it, but violent criminals killed by rivals don’t exactly represent a loss to society when you consider the damage they had already done and where the path they were on would likely lead.
And demands to require gun owners to carry insurance are hardly new. Curiously, though, when they do it on their own, privately and without coercive government mandates, the grabbers disparage it as “murder insurance.”
You can’t please some people, it would seem, but the demand for a “monopoly of violence” through incremental infringement has never been about “gun safety.” That the predatory misfits slaughtering others with firearms will continue to get whatever weapons they want without insurance and annual fees is hardly the point.
To paraphrase “Gold Hat,” they don’t have to show you any stinking policies.
The citizens this will hurt the most — peaceable citizens of limited means who live in areas most affected by criminal mayhem — will now have a choice if they are unwilling or unable to pay the tribute: Either be “law-abiding” and assume the risks of being unarmed or be “law-defying” and assume the risks of being armed. It will boil down to which criminal gangs they fear most – the private ones or the public ones.
And let’s not forget that even if they try to comply, what better way to expand citizen disarmament than to manipulate and change the rules to qualify for insurance. What if the carrier turns them down? What if their payments are late?
This prior restraint on a right is similar in many ways to the odious poll taxes of days gone by. Talk about disenfranchising minorities!
Talk about disenfranchising all Americans of the most fundamental and basic of rights. But then again, this is not just California, this is San Jose in Santa Clara County, where the sheriff’s usual denial of “may issue” concealed carry permits has been somehow mysteriously softened by campaign contributions.
Speaking of which, since this latest blood dance started with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority “mass shooting,” here’s something Liccardo isn’t telling the public and CNN isn’t telling its audience:
“[Survivor Kirk] Bertolet wishes he had been armed so he could have prevented more deaths after Cassidy started shooting. He has a concealed carry permit for Virginia, but it isn’t valid in California,” Gilroy Life (and very few others) reported. “’Me and a co-worker both looked at each other,’ he said. ‘We could have at least stopped him from going to Building A. We were willing to put our lives at risk.’”
Don’t look for that to be factored into the “costs.”
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
