(NewsNation Now) — The mayor of San Jose said a new ordinance that requires gun owners to be insured and pay a $25 fee will subsidize the city’s response to gun injuries and deaths.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told NewsNation’s Leland Vittert the ordinance is about encouraging gun safety.
“The Second Amendment protects every American’s right to own and possess a gun,” Liccardo said Wednesday on “On Balance with Leland Vittert.” “It doesn’t require that taxpayers subsidize that right. And that’s exactly what’s happening today. In the city of San Jose, nearly $40 million is being spent by taxpayers for merely the public response to gun harm and gun violence.”
Liccardo said the money from the fee would go toward “violence prevention and gun harm prevention” through services such as gun safety classes and mental health treatment. A yet-to-be-created nonprofit organization will collect the fee.
Critics of the ordinance, including a man who recently filed a lawsuit, say it imposes a burden on legal gun owners to cover the cost of consequences from gun crimes.
However, Liccardo believes there are enough injuries and deaths being caused by legal gun owners that the ordinance is necessary.
“More than a third of gun-related injuries in our emergency rooms are unintentional shootings,” he said. “There’s a lot we can do with law abiding gun owners to make us all safer, including the gun owners and their families themselves.”
Still, the ordinance is heading to a hearing. The National Association for Gun Rights and gun owner Mark Sikes sued San Jose in federal court.
“The law is unconstitutional,” Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said Wednesday. “The law compels people to purchase insurance that doesn’t necessarily exist and that demonstrates that this law is not a good faith attempt to do anything other than ban or burden the lawful possession of guns.”
The mayor pledged nobody would lose their guns or face criminal charges over their insurance status.
“This is this is not about going soft on crime,” Liccardo said. “This is about reducing gun harm in all of its forms.”