According to Mercury news
Less than a month after the deadliest mass shooting in Bay Area history, San Jose leaders passed a new gun law that requires retailers to video-record all firearm purchases, becoming the largest city in California and one of the first major cities in America to do so.
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 such as a felon or minor who is barred from owning firearms.
“We know a significant number of crooks and gangs get firearms through straw purchasing,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said. “This set of ordinances is really focused on narrowing the flow of guns to those which are clearly legal and hopefully doing something to deter the flow of guns that are unlawful to own.”
The new law is just one part of a comprehensive 10-point gun control plan that Liccardo unveiled last week in the wake of the mass shooting in late May at a San Jose rail yard. A disgruntled VTA employee fatally shot nine of his co-workers and then himself, according to police.
The mayor’s plan also calls for a separate ordinance that would require gun owners to carry liability insurance and pay a fee to cover taxpayer costs associated with firearm violence. The council is expected to consider that proposal this fall.
Liccardo first announced in February 2019 that he wanted to make changes to the city’s gun safety ordinance, including mandating that retailers video-record firearm purchases. He said the adoption of the video recording regulation was delayed, in part, due to the pandemic.
San Jose joined Chicago and several smaller California cities, including Campbell, El Cerrito and San Carlos, in requiring the videotaping of gun sales, according to the Giffords Law Center. Walmart — the nation’s largest gun seller — began voluntarily videotaping gun sales in 2008.
Liccardo said he is “trying to lead an effort to bring other cities and hopefully the state along” in adopting similar legislation.
Gun-rights advocates, like the Sacramento-based Firearms Policy Coalition, quickly slammed the new ordinance, calling it “outrageous and unconstitutional.”
The organization added that it “will not hesitate” to challenge the city’s policies in federal court and “take every possible action to block their enforcement.”
“It is outrageous that Mayor Liccardo wants to use ‘Big Brother’-style omniveillant to record gun owners’ every move, violating the privacy of millions, especially at-risk firearm purchasers,” the coalition wrote in a statement. “This Orwellian requirement would be rightly universally opposed were the City to impose similar video and audio-recording mandates in mosques and churches, book stores, or abortion clinics.”
Speaking to some privacy concerns, City Attorney Nora Frimann said that most of retail stores already have some sort of surveillance system. The new law merely requires them to take an extra step to capture audio as well and to retain the videos for at least 30 days, giving law enforcement the opportunity to collect evidence they might need to solve certain gun crimes.
“We think we’ve threaded the needle on this and what we’re bringing forward is defensible,” Frimann said.
The ordinance also bans the sale of guns or ammunition from residences in San Jose, mandates a license for gun transfer sales, or advertisement within the city of concealable firearms and ammunition and requires that sellers maintain an inventory of firearms and ammunition on a yearly basis.
Under the ordinance, gun retailers must train employees to question and determine whether each potential customer is attempting to buy a firearm for another person. They are also required to display signs with information about gun laws, suicide prevention and domestic violence. Businesses will have three months to comply with the new rule.
The new ordinance received mixed feedback from community members.
Sarah Huff Brancato, whose son Michael Munns was the first person shot and killed in 2020 in San Jose, called into Tuesday night’s meeting to urge the council to enact the law.
“These city ordinances are such important steps in forging forward to be proactive in the prevention of illegal guns entering in our precious community, our city, our backyards,” she said.
Another person, who did not provide their name, said the new requirements were a “wrongheaded and simplistic effort to solve the problem of gun violence.”
“This is nothing more than another thinly-veiled attempt to completely eliminate gun ownership and the constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves,” the caller said. “Tragedies like the one at the VTA, to which you are attempting to respond to, will not be eliminated by this regulation.”
Although council members acknowledged the blowback that gun control measures can evoke, they all agreed this law was something that needed their support.
“Nobody will ever suggest that there is anything we can do to eliminate all incidents (of gun violence),” Councilmember David Cohen said. “But our goal is to make San Jose safer and to be a model for what cities can do to makes sure guns don’t fall into the wrong hands.”