San Jose CA gun tax law is a positive first step to rational gun ownership

[JRDelirious]

@bump

Surely there’s a “start” date for the legislation to be in effect, and California insurance companies will be able to offer policies that meet the minimum legally required limits by that date.

As mentioned, a mandate that insurers must offer certain lines is the province of the state insurance commissioner, not of a locality. I suppose San Jose could say “we will not buy insurance products for the City from anyone who does not offer such a coverage” but we’ll see.

As you very rightly point out, part of the problem will be how do you do the actuary work for something like that. Now, per the letter of the ordinance in the earlier section, the insurance is for negligent or accidental damages while the person owns the firearm, which many current insurances would have covered anyway. The “trick” is in that the ordinance would seem to say that you need a gun-specific endorsement in the policy, and further on down says something that sounds like that in the time frame between when you last laid eyes on the gun and when you file a lost or stolen gun report with your hometown LEA you are still on the hook without excluding criminal actions explicitly.

So then I wonder what if an insurer turns around and puts in:
“Section XYZ: For the purposes of this policy, any damages resulting from criminal or illegal use, or conveyance, of the owner’s firearm, by any person including the owner, their assigns or agents or any person who may come into possession of the firearm with or without the owner’s knowledge and consent, at any time during or after ownership, shall be excluded from coverage.”

(And DO in fact most homeowner/renter/liability insurances pay negligent/accidental damages resulting from firearms in the household, under the existing policies, or do many homeowner/renter policies exclude it as it is?)

@bump

I’m not at all against licensing and insurance for guns. I tend to think that a few minor hurdles like that would dissuade a lot of the idiots and morons from owning guns and keep it in the hands of people who are motivated enough to pay for insurance/licensing to own them. I don’t like the idea of gun registration; just a license to own that has nothing to do with how many guns you have.

That does sound good, and heck, that was what used to be the case in many states for the Concealed Carry Permit: evidence you had gone through a certain level of training and background checking but not tied in to what actual hardware you had. Heck, I had a CCW permit without owning any firearms whatsoever! So I would not be against a basic shall-issue requirement to have evidence that you got some amount of training and advice ahead of time.

But, of course, the gun “community” has of late been advocating for unrestricted unconditional carry (*) no questions asked, no hoops to jump through, and it has been passing in an increasing number of states.

( * they usually describe it by another word ending in -tional, but I don’t think that word means what they think it means…)

[bump]

@JRDelirious

As mentioned, a mandate that insurers must offer certain lines is the province of the state insurance commissioner, not of a locality. I suppose San Jose could say “we will not buy insurance products for the City from anyone who does not offer such a coverage” but we’ll see.

Oh, I wasn’t saying that there would/should be a mandate that insurers provide those policies, but rather that someone will- nature abhors a vacuum, and that’s a big gaping hole that some enterprising insurance company could make money in.

But that’ll take some time- at least a couple of months I would think, for them to slap some sort of policies together, publicize them, etc…

So I would imagine that the liability insurance requirement would be worded in some way like “Takes effect on April 1, 2022” or some such, so that insurers would have a fighting chance to gin up policies for any willing gun owners. Otherwise it seems like an unfair expectation- they’re planning on penalizing people for not having something that doesn’t exist? That would never fly in any reasonable court, California or anywhere else.

@JRDelirious

evidence you had gone through a certain level of training and background checking but not tied in to what actual hardware you had. Heck, I had a CCW permit without owning any firearms whatsoever! So I would not be against a basic shall-issue requirement to have evidence that you got some amount of training and advice ahead of time.

That’s kind of what I was thinking; a license saying you’re not a complete moron, and that you were able to retain whatever safety/liability information you needed to long enough to take and pass the test. I wouldn’t even necessarily make it an overly hard test- just something that would prove that you knew the 4 basic gun safety rules, and what’s at stake if you use your gun irresponsibly in some way, be that inappropriate storage, brandishing it inappropriately, carrying it in the wrong places, shooting innocents, and so forth.

[DrDeth]

@bump

So I would imagine that the liability insurance requirement would be worded in some way like “Takes effect on April 1, 2022” or some such, so that insurers would have a fighting chance to gin up policies for any willing gun owners. Otherwise it seems like an unfair expectation- they’re planning on penalizing people for not having something that doesn’t exist? That would never fly in any reasonable court, California or anywhere else.

No insurance will cover that.

And yes, you are correct-they’re planning on penalizing people for not having something that doesn’t exist?

And you are also correct- That would never fly in any reasonable court, California or anywhere else. It does not even have to go to SCOTUS- the State has reserved for itself all gun control laws. That blocked the SF handgun ban before it got to SCOTUS.

I don’t mind some gun safety classes etc to get a CCW, but in the largest CA cities they are doled out solely to VIPs and as political favoritism.

[Lumpy]

@k9bfriender

@Crafter_Man

The core idea is without merit because it turns a right into a privilege.

No rights are absolute.

Undoubtedly, but the Second Amendment is historically the least absolute right in the entire US constitution. To the point that 9th Circuit appeals judge Lawrence VanDyke complained in a recent sarcastically worded opinion that

our circuit can uphold any and every gun regulation because our current Second Amendment framework is exceptionally malleable and essentially equates to rational basis review.

and

We refer to strict scrutiny as a theoretical matter—a thought-experiment, really. Our court has never ultimately applied strict scrutiny to any real-life gun regulation.

[Lumpy]

@JRDelirious

But, of course, the gun “community” has of late been advocating for unrestricted unconditional carry (*) no questions asked, no hoops to jump through, and it has been passing in an increasing number of states.

Which, oddly enough, has somehow not resulted in a holocaust of increased gun violence. Go figure.

[Babale]

@DrDeth

No insurance will cover that.

Because as we all know insurance companies hate making money?

There aren’t enough eye roll smileys in the world

[Babale]

@Lumpy

Which, oddly enough, has somehow not resulted in a holocaust of increased gun violence.

Hasn’t it?

[Lumpy]

I’d reply but I’ve strayed too far from the subject of San Jose already.

[suranyi]

August 8 is the effective date for this law, from what I read.

[DrDeth]

They love making money.

But for a moderate sized city?

A completely new avenue of tort and common law? One that will get serious scrutiny from The Insurance commissioner?

Insurance companies are also extremely conservative, and i doubt there would be enough money to go out on a limb like that and offer insurance that has never been done before, assuming that it is even legal.

[DrDeth]

What exactly does one death in another city, in another state have to do with the San Jose law? And how does one death, tragic as it may be, equate to a holocaust of increased gun violence?

US crime: Is America seeing a surge in violence?

Overall, violent crime was up by about 3% in 2020 over the previous year, but this should be seen in the context of the longer term downward trend from a peak in the early 1990s.

While 3% increase is not at all good, it is by no means a “holocaust”. And the BBC make a excellent point. Violent crime has been on a strong downturn over the last three decades.

[suranyi]

I’m not sure what you mean by “moderate”. San Jose is the 10th largest city in the US.

[Miller]

@UltraVires

That [threat of being a victim of gun violence] applies to me, you, and everyone else in the country. Why am I uniquely responsible for funding this non-existent, non profit that does…something…to train people how to safely handle their guns or…something…mental illness.

Sure, it applies to both of us. But my ability to protect myself from gun violence is fundamentally limited by people like you, who enjoy owning guns as a hobby. Any law that I support to protect me from guns, has to be balanced to minimally impact your ability to own guns recreationally. For you, the ability to pursue your hobby is worth the increased risk that you’ll be a victim of gun violence. As someone who has no interest in gun ownership as a hobby, I’m taking that same increased risk, with no benefit to myself at all. And on top of that, you want to take money out of my pocket to deal with the social costs of your hobby?

Doesn’t seem remotely fair to me. You want to live in a society overflowing with deadly weapons, the least you could do is eat the costs for it.

[Crane]

Amen!

[UltraVires]

We both live in a society that protects gun ownership as a constitutional right. The fact that a person may or may not own one has nothing to do with you being safe. It is whether someone uses it against you, which I fully believe should be illegal. My choice to buy a deer rifle did not increase the danger to you one bit. I’m paying because the person who criminally injures and kills others is judgment proof and gun owners are particularly unpopular with the left so they are subject to this with no rational basis.

Take the idiot in Charlottesville who killed that young lady with his car. Is that partially your fault for owning a car? I’ve read about knife attacks in the UK. Is that partially my fault because I was chopping vegetables earlier? Just because you don’t like guns doesn’t make all of them the same. Respectfully, it is an incredibly lazy way of thinking that this board is much better about until we say the “g” word, then all logic is out the window.

@bump

Oh, I wasn’t saying that there would/should be a mandate that insurers provide those policies, but rather that someone will- nature abhors a vacuum, and that’s a big gaping hole that some enterprising insurance company could make money in.

They would be making money by providing nothing. Note that the San Jose law doesn’t purport to change the tort law to make you liable for an accident that happens with a stolen gun. It just says that you must carry insurance against it. People are already insured against that by virtue of the fact that it isn’t a valid cause of action.

To say that insurance companies would create such a product would implicate them in a fraud. It would be like selling a policy that protects you if you are attacked by a unicorn.

[Miller]

@UltraVires

We both live in a society that protects gun ownership as a constitutional right.

Right, and that means that most useful solutions to gun violence have been taken off the table. And they’ll remain off the table, because any attempt to change the Constitution would be strongly opposed by gun owners like yourself. So we’ll continue to have gun violence, because gun owners like you will prevent us from passing the sort of legislation actually necessary to stop gun violence. Which makes you partially responsible for the situation we’re in.

[Babale]

@UltraVires

My choice to buy a deer rifle did not increase the danger to you one bit.

False. Here are just a few of the ways it did increase the danger to me:

1. you now own a gun and at any moment could snap and decide to use it to murder me. You can assure me you won’t all day long; I don’t trust you with that power.

2. you may tire of the gun and pawn it, or it may be stolen or lost. In any of those cases, a criminal could get a hold of the gun and use it against me.

3. you are subsidizing the gun industry with your purchase ensuring more guns are produced and end up in the hands of criminals.

[Babale]

@Miller

@UltraVires

We both live in a society that protects gun ownership as a constitutional right.

Right, and that means that most useful solutions to gun violence have been taken off the table. And they’ll remain off the table, because any attempt to change the Constitution would be strongly opposed by gun owners like yourself. So we’ll continue to have gun violence, because gun owners like you will prevent us from passing the sort of legislation actually necessary to stop gun violence. Which makes you partially responsible for the situation we’re in.

1,000,000% this.

[Crane]

@UltraVires

Take the idiot in Charlottesville who killed that young lady with his car. Is that partially your fault for owning a car?

It’s a spill over cost of automobile ownership. Yes, it is caused be making automobiles available to all citizens.

[bump]

That’s a bit extreme. I mean, me buying a propane cylinder means that I could decide to use it like a bomb, or that someone else could steal it and use it like a bomb, and that I am subsidizing the propane industry which means that there are more propane cylinders that others could use as bombs.

Sub in pressure cookers, knives, etc… and it’s just as silly. There’s nothing more inherently dangerous about a gun than a propane cylinder; in fact they’re more inherently safe as there’s nothing that passively happens that can make a gun go off if you’re storing it safely (i.e. unloaded and not cocked). Propane cylinders can leak, corrode, etc… which can cause issues.