American Family News has reported on the coming ordinance for San Joe, a city of 1 million, where the city council has approved a measure from Mayor Sam Liccardo that requires gun owners to purchase insurance and pay a yearly fee to keep guns in the home.
Amy Swearer, a legal analyst at The Heritage Foundation, says the city deserves scrutiny about whether the ordinance is constitutional and legal, and if it is even a good idea that will make the city safer.
“But even when you put all of that aside,” she says, “one of the biggest problems with both of these mandates, both the gun insurance mandate and the gun ownership tax, at least from a practical standpoint, is that the city has set this up so that there is no real way of enforcing it."
San Jose is basically relying on an “honor system” of compliance, she says, and there is no list of gun owners for the city to review for compliance.
“And so from a very basic, just practical perspective,” she says, “you can't even enforce this. And that's before we get to the substantive issues."
Swearer lists eight problems with the San Joe gun law in a Daily Signal op-ed that can be read here.
