California’s third-most-populous city wants to tax citizens for exercising their Second Amendment rights.
California’s third-most-populous city wants to tax citizens for exercising their Second Amendment rights.
T he government of San Jose has concocted a brilliant plan to fight crime: It intends to target the people who don’t commit it. Once its new rule has been finalized later this year, the city will become the first jurisdiction in America that requires gun owners to pay an annual fee before they can exercise their right to own a firearm. Henceforth, it seems, San Jose hopes to be heavy on the bill, light on the rights.
Reporting on the policy, the San Francisco Chronicle submits that the measure will force “firearms owners to pay back taxpayers for gun violence.” But “pay back” isn’t really the right phrase, is it? One “pays back” something one has borrowed, something one owes, or something that will compensate another for one’s actions. Most gun owners — in San Jose and elsewhere — have nothing to “pay back.” Per the Chronicle, San Jose spends $63 million each year dealing with violence that involves guns. How much of that violence was caused by the sort of legal gun owner who pays personal-property taxes and takes out insurance? The answer is close to none.
This being so, one can only assume that the city’s argument is that, by insisting upon maintaining their right to keep and bear arms, law-abiding gun owners put themselves at fault for any subsequent abuse of that right by others. This is a shockingly dangerous contention to make in a free republic such as ours — akin to the idea that those who insist upon the liberty to speak freely should pay a fee for the privilege lest one of them start a riot or engage in defamation. Once upon a time, we had laws that forced Americans to hand over cash before exercising their rights; we called them poll taxes. Before that, there was the Stamp Act, one of the impetuses for the Founders’ revolution. That San Jose is focused on bullets and firearms rather than ballots and newspapers does not fix the problem with such a rule.
The city’s case is rendered even weaker by its intention to exempt the poor from the law’s terms. As a general matter, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with demanding different tax rates from different people; indeed, even under a pure flat tax, the rich would end up paying considerably more than the poor. But the stated aim of this law is not to force the rich to subsidize the poor, or to raise revenues necessary for the provision of common services; it’s to force the people who own guns — i.e. the people whom the city believes are the problem — “to relieve taxpayers of the costs of responding to gun violence.” Naturally, there is nothing less violent or less gunny about “gun violence” that is committed by people who are poor. Bullets fly at the same rate from their guns. Those they shoot end up just as injured or dead. The descriptions of their exploits read the same way in the newspapers. Are we seriously to believe that the problem San Jose faces is predominantly with rich people who have legally purchased their firearms?
Defending the measure, the mayor of San Jose, Sam Liccardo, told the Chronicle that “the Second Amendment certainly protects the right of every citizen to own a gun,” but that “it does not mandate that taxpayers subsidize that right.” This is a remarkable thing to hear a politician say — especially a California Democrat. Governments “subsidize” rights every day. They pay to police and facilitate mass assemblies — and to clean up if those assemblies turn into riots. They pay for the judicial system. They pay to ease access to the ballot box. They pay for lawyers for the indigent. In some states, they even pay for positive “rights” that the courts have invented from whole cloth. Other than that Mayor Liccardo happens to dislike them, it is not at all clear to me why gun owners should be treated differently. If, as he acknowledges, the “Second Amendment certainly protects the right of every citizen to own a gun,” then, without fear or favor, the government must, too. That, per our own Declaration of Independence, is why the government exists.
All in all, San Jose’s proposal is ugly, futile, and possibly unconstitutional. And yet, in one sense, it is appropriate, in that it represents our broader gun-control debate in miniature. Once again, a group of politicians have got together to look at a serious issue, and, once again, they have decided to go after the people they disliked before they started. This isn’t governing. It’s warfare.