The San Jose City Council last night passed a measure that requires gun owners in city limits to carry liability insurance, the first US jurisdiction to mandate such coverage, and within minutes of the proposal’s passage gun industry advocates filed a lawsuit to overturn the measure, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
The legislature would also require gun owners to pay an annual registration fee similar to ones paid for cars or pets. The money collected will go to reduce the costs to the city for gun injuries and to support safe gun ownership programs.
The Supreme Court has ruled officials have the legal authority to regulate gun ownership in their jurisdictions, short of banning gun ownership. In the Heller decision, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose[.]”
Within minutes, the National Association for Gun Rights and San Jose resident and gunowner Mark Sikes filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the regulation.
“We have spent nearly two years in deep discussion with legal experts throughout the country and here locally about how we could fashion an ordinance that would be constitutional, enforceable and have the impact of reducing the risk of gun violence and gun harm in our community,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said at a news briefing Wednesday. “Of course we know this is going to be a battle, but that’s the nature of gun regulation in this country.”