Let’s take a trip to California to learn about the most recent government overreach involving our Second Amendment.

The mayor of San Jose, as well as the city council, are in full support of requiring gun owners to pay a $25 “harm reduction” fee and liability insurance to the government.

Mayor Sam Liccardo somehow believes that imposing a tiny $25 tax – not even a tax but a fee – for owning something is somehow going to benefit the community.

Liccardo gave this explanation:

“For example, there’s a bar brawl and they’re patting down everybody and someone’s got a gun. ‘Have you paid your fee? You have insurance?’ ‘No.’ OK, well, there’s an opportunity for us to remove the gun. And then when the gun owner comes back and demonstrates that they comply with the law and they’re a lawful gun owner, they get their gun back. But in the meantime, you’ve taken a gun out of a bar brawl. And that’s not a bad thing,” he argued.

How insane does this sound? What sort of country have we become when you can be out minding your business and then get patted down and be asked, “Have you paid your fee?” I don’t know about you but this sounds very reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

And I have another question about this made-up scenario that he has come up with. Who is doing the padding down and why are they still concerned about the brawl at this point? Did you really get a gun out of a bar brawl, or was the bar brawl over?

In no form or fashion should any government entity be able to require you to pay for something that already belongs to you and if you don’t pay it then they can take it from you. That is the very definition of theft if you ask me.

He continued, “We’re forming a 501(c)(3) foundation, which is going to receive the dollars, and the board, which will be comprised of a host of folks, including, for example, Stanford professors, an epidemiologist who has been focused on gun harm, and nonprofit experts who understand domestic violence prevention programs, suicide prevention,” he said. “We’ve invited and at least one member of a gun group has actually joined this effort to create this nonprofit, because we want organizations representing gun owners to be at the table, helping us to understand, how do we best communicate, how do we best invest?”

What it sounds like to me is that this money isn’t actually going towards anything other than it’s just money that they are taking from normal everyday Americans and giving to somebody else whoever sits on this board for nothing.