CA City Mandates VIDEO RECORDING ALL GUN BUYS

P. Gardner Goldsmith | June 18, 2021

Evidently, the members of the San Jose City Council have a hard time understanding the phrase, “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

On Tuesday, June 15, the city politicians unanimously ordered all city-based gun sellers to VIDEO RECORD all firearm purchases, as part of Mayor Sam Liccardo’s larger plan to supposedly “curb gun violence.”

Writes Maggie Angst, for The Mercury News:

(C)ity leaders have passed a new gun law that requires retailers to video-record all firearm purchases, making San Jose the largest city in California and among the first major ones in the United States to do so.

Evidently, the members of the City Council also have a hard time understanding the Fourth Amendment. One wonders if they would require video recording of all transactions inside abortion clinics as people engage in murder for hire, in contrast to the peaceful, rightful act of acquiring a gun, which is the acquisition of a tool most often used for self-defense, to stop crime.

Even IF so-called "common sense gun statutes" saw a correlated decrease in violent crime, the government still would not be justified to crush the inherent right of gun ownership. The right to self-defense stands, regardless of political rationales to attack it, because rights preexist, and are superior to, the polis.

 

 

And gun restrictions don’t make communities safer. The evidence for precisely the opposite result is overwhelming. As I have written for MRCTV, both the UK and Australia saw INCREASES in violent crime after sweeping gun restrictions, despite political claims:

Thus we get the declaration that violent crime and gun homicides/suicides went down immediately after the 'ban' took nearly 20 percent of Aussie guns off 'the streets', as some have claimed.

The trouble is, it’s not true that violent crime, or even gun-related crime, decreased immediately after the gun ban. This is a case of temporal manipulation to reach a desired conclusion. In fact, gun-related crime increased for years after the 1996 ‘ban,’ and the only way disputants can claim that violent crime decreased is by widening the window of time beyond 10 years.

As John Lott has correctly noted, violent crime increased immediately after the ‘ban,’ and homicides and armed robberies continued the upward trend until 2000, never dropping below 1996 levels until after 2010 (in the case of armed robberies, they still hadn’t gone below 1996 levels by 2010).

So, not only do government infringements of the right to keep and bear arms not stop criminals from engaging in violent crime, they likely put people at greater risk.

But that won’t deter San Jose Mayor Liccardo and the City Council members. 

Writes Angst:

The new ordinance, unanimously approved by the City Council on Tuesday night, aims to deter an illegal practice known as straw purchasing, in which someone buys a gun for another person who is barred from owning firearms, such as a felon or minor.

Curiously, few question how a so-called “justice” system can deem a felon safe enough to walk free, but not safe enough to exercise his or her inherent right to keep and bear arms, nor do they question how “banning” a released felon from owning a gun is constitutional or will stop the felon from acquiring a gun. But, far be it for a non-politician to question the anointed rulers of San Jose. They have bigger plans afoot, and this mandate on gun shops and their customers, this infringement of the Second and Fourth Amendments, is just the start.

The first Liccardo plan is a wholly peaceful, completely constitutional piece of fascism that would require gun owners to get liability insurance. Because, of course, setting a-priori decrees and conditions on how people can exercise a right is in no way an infringement backed by government threats… not at all (wink)... And, heck, telling other people that they MUST purchase something is totally cool – after all, the feds already have done that with OBAMA-SAVES-AMERICA-AND-YOU-BETTER-AGREE-OR-ELSE-CARE. 

The second of Liccardo’s cunning plans is to force gun owners to pay a “tax” to cover “expenses incurred” by the government to fight “gun violence.”

Related: Intellectual Ammunition: Mythology v Facts of 'Gun Control'

The fact that armed civilians at the scene stop more crimes than armed police who arrive later seems not to have been part of the Liccardo thinking (if one can call it that). And incorporating this fact into Liccardo’s approach would imply that the situation should be reversed, that, if any group should be compensating others for its members’ involvement in undermining safety, the government should pay armed civilians. Government only operates through tax theft, and research has shown over and over that private ownership of firearms acts as a bulwark against violent crime more than government policing stops crime.

Finally, there is the undeniable fact that those San Jose politicians who proclaim that they oppose “gun violence” are, by issuing their decrees, engaging in threats of gun violence. 

The only way to enforce their mandates is with police, who are permitted to use firearms bought at taxpayer expense. Should a peaceful person not comply with the government edict, the police will be sent to his or her workplace or home. Should the owner resist police there, as the owner has a full natural right to do, police are permitted by government to engage in violence – backed by the use of their firearms.

Gun “control” statutes and “regulations” are government threats of gun-backed violence -- period.

And San Jose’s politicians might want to think about that, even as they consider more egregious attacks on residents’ rights.

 

Related:

Intellectual Ammunition: Mythology v Facts of 'Gun Control'