San Jose, California is already home to the most expensive concealed carry permit in the state, but the cost is going to climb even higher on July 1. Right now the city charges applicants a whopping $1,491 to obtain permission to exercise their right to bear arms, but on Wednesday the rate will increase to $1,591.
The city isn’t the only jurisdiction in California to charge four-figures to exercise a fundamental civil right. Santa Clara County, where former sheriff Laurie Smith was convicted by a civil jury for running a pay-to-play scheme involving rarely-issued “may issue” permits a few years ago, is still doing its best to keep the number of active permits low by charging $976 for the initial application fee, along with more costs for mandated psychological testing and firearms training.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association and Second Amendment Foundation are suing Santa Clara County over its fees, and if a judge rules the county out of line then San Jose’s fees could be on the chopping block soon after. As the groups alleged in their initial complaint, the high price to apply for a permit is undoubtably going to have a chilling effect on residents exercising their rights.
Santa Clara County’s new CCW policies have merely substituted an underground “pay-to-play” grift, for a broad daylight constitutionally corrupt grift, that is intended to dissuade most people from exercising a fundamental right. Ironically (or maybe unironically), Defendants’ website has a page titled “Apply for concealed carry weapon license.” That introductory page contains language and links to other websites which strongly imply that campaign contribution disclosures are part of the licensing process, by suggesting that CCW permit applicants are required to comply with Government Code § 84308 (the Levine Act) while their applications are pending.
… The Defendants’ policies of taxing a right out of the reach of citizens with modest means, imposing political speech regulations, and requiring intrusive psychological testing have just as much power to destroy a fundamental right as the pre-Bruen may-issue policies that laid the foundation for holding those rights hostage to political patronage. These unconstitutional practices are subject to the acid test of the Second Amendment “because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusing ends” thus the Supreme Court in its Bruen decision invited “constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”
Santa Clara County (and the city of San Jose) maintain that they’re only passing the expense of background check investigations onto the applicants themselves, which is allowed under California’s Bruen-response bill SB 2.
There’s one big problem with that argument, at least as I see it. The Supreme Court has said that “shall issue” carry regimes are presumptively constitutional, but may still run afoul of the Second Amendment if lengthy wait times or “exorbitant fees” are a feature of that regime. What California has done is put in place a system that comes chock-full of expenses, even beyond the application fee charged by the licensing authority. The $500 fee for psychological testing is about 10x the cost of a concealed carry license in many states, and that doesn’t even factor in the nearly $1,000 charged by the sheriff’s department (or the San Jose PD).
It really doesn’t matter if these departments are merely passing on the price of conducting an investigation into carry applicants if the net result is that many residents can’t afford to exercise their right to carry as a result. Even if it really does cost the San Jose PD nearly $1,600 to investigate an applicant (and I doubt very much that’s the case), it’s still an exorbitant amount of money, and the Supreme Court has suggested that renders the supposedly “shall issue” scheme unconstitutional.
I know the DOJ Civil Rights Division has limited resources and a target-rich environment, but I’d love to see San Jose get sued over the pattern and practice of charging residents an arm and a leg if they want to bear arms in self-defense. The CRPA/SAF litigation against Santa Clara County could very well put an end to these abusive practices statewide, but I’d like to see officials in San Jose sweat out a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department too.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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