A federal judge in San Jose, Beth Labson Freeman, upheld the city's unique gun insurance ordinance on July 17, 2023, which requires firearm owners to carry liability insurance for accidental shootings involving their weapons, leaving pro-gun groups upset in the aftermath KRON4 reported. The National Association for Gun Rights, one of the pro-gun groups, claimed that the ordinance violated their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, but the judge dismissed most of their challenges.
This decision is a victory not just for San Jose, but for cities nationwide looking for innovative solutions to address gun violence, according to former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who led the efforts to put the ordinance in place before he left office Davis Vanguard reported. The ordinance has been widely praised by gun regulation advocates, and San Jose now holds the distinction of being the first U.S. municipality to impose liability insurance rules on gun owners.
U.S. District Court Judge Labson Freeman applied a new test announced by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 known as "New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen" to determine the constitutionality of the insurance mandate and concluded that it did not violate the Second Amendment due to multiple independent reasons, such as its consistency with the nation's long-standing "historical tradition" of shifting the costs of firearm accidents from victims to the firearms' owners Davis Vanguard reported.
However, all may not be entirely lost for the pro-gun group, as the judge allowed the challengers to re-file their complaint regarding a different part of the ordinance at a later date KRON4 noted. This separate part of the ordinance requires gun owners to pay a $25 annual fee to the city to support a fund aimed at preventing gun-related injuries, but the judge found that the challenge to this fee was not "ripe" for decision as the city has not yet implemented it.
Despite the setback, the National Association for Gun Rights remained defiant, attributing the federal judge's decision to "bad-faith judicial acrobatics" that relied more on anti-gun groups than the U.S. Constitution or the U.S. Supreme Court Mercury News reported. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, another party involved in the lawsuits, did not immediately respond to a request for comment and it was unclear if they plan to appeal the decision.
The city of San Jose maintains that the ruling "affirms that there are constitutional ways to provide protections from gun-related harms, such as liability insurance, for the public and gun owners" and expects that it would pave the way for other local and state entities working on similar gun safety initiatives Mercury News mentioned.
San Jose's "Gun Harm Reduction Ordinance" could potentially bring in over $1 million per year for the city through the $25 nonprofit fee imposed on its estimated 55,000 gun owners, with fines of up to $1,000 for residents that do not adhere to the insurance requirements.
