September 17, 2026
San Jose just got caught doing what Democrat cities have been doing for years: treating the right to keep and bear arms like a luxury good. These people will abuse their power to no end, all to rob Americans of their right to bear arms. Only their criminals can have guns, in their warped, twisted way of looking at America today.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice filed suit Wednesday against the City of San Jose and the San Jose Police Department over a concealed-carry license fee that now sits at $1,591 — the highest in the United States. Twenty percent is due up front. The rest is due if the city bothers to issue the license. On top of that, applicants pay for a psychological exam the city demands. That is not a public-safety process. That is a cover charge on a constitutional right.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, running the Civil Rights Division, put it in language any working American can understand: “All law-abiding Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense. This right is not a luxury reserved for a privileged few, but a fundamental element of our republic.” Then the line that should be carved over every city-council dais in California: “You don’t need a law degree to recognize that charging a fee several times higher than the cost of the firearm itself is illogical, and an unconstitutional attempt to impede Americans’ Second Amendment rights.”
The Justice Department’s complaint is blunt. San Jose is a “national outlier.” The fee is “abusive.” It cannot survive the Supreme Court’s Bruen test because there is no American tradition of pricing ordinary people out of public carry. The city’s purpose, DOJ lawyers wrote, is “making it impractical for middle class citizens and impossible for low-income citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights.” That is the whole game. If you cannot ban the gun after Heller and Bruen, you ban the paycheck.
Look at the comparison the Justice Department put on paper. Washington, D.C. charges $75. New York’s three-year handgun license is $340. Boston wants about $100. Philadelphia wants $20. Even San Francisco — same state, same political religion — charges $144. Texas, where the right is treated like a right, charges $40 for a license to carry. Indiana’s permit is free; you pay the fingerprint shop. San Jose wants forty times what Texas asks and more than a hundred times what Indiana asks. That is not cost recovery. That is a veto.
San Jose City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood answered the feds with the oldest staff-hour story in municipal government: 6.5 hours of processing, overhead, “full cost recovery.” Fine. Then explain why the same right costs $40 in Texas and $13 in Indiana. Either California cops are uniquely incompetent at paperwork, or the paperwork was designed to be expensive. The DOJ noted the June fee hike — nearly $300 in three fiscal years — came with no real justification in the resolution that imposed it. They hiked it because they could.
And the $1,591 is only the front door.
San Jose already built the first-in-the-nation gun-owner squeeze: mandatory liability insurance plus an annual “harm reduction” fee funneled to a city-picked nonprofit. Miss a payment and the city has talked confiscation. Gun-rights groups sued that scheme the week it passed. Former Mayor Sam Liccardo’s line at the time was the tell: the Second Amendment “does not require taxpayers to subsidize gun ownership.” No one asked them to subsidize it. They were asked to stop taxing it. The right does not come with a subscription.
California layered the rest of the gauntlet statewide: a 10-day waiting period, an 11 percent excise on guns and ammunition, an “assault weapons” ban on the most common rifles in America, a magazine cap that treats a standard Glock magazine like contraband, a handgun roster, and — until courts started carving it up — ammo background checks and a one-gun-a-month ration. The Ninth Circuit has already held that California’s one-gun-a-month law is facially unconstitutional because the Second Amendment protects “arms,” plural. The state argued, with a straight face, that the Constitution guarantees you one gun. That is how far the project has gone.
None of it disarms criminals. California still leads the country in active-shooter incidents in multiple FBI years while running the tightest civilian gun code in the Union. In June, two people were shot — one killed — at a World Cup fan zone in gun-controlled San Jose. The laws that price a grandmother out of a carry permit do not follow the guy who already ignores every statute on the books. They follow the citizen who still believes in them.
San Jose is the local franchise of a national blue-state playbook that kicked into a higher gear after NYSRPA v. Bruen killed “may-issue” discretion.
Colorado’s Democrats dressed an “assault weapons” ban as a permit-to-purchase scheme. Want a common semiautomatic? Get the state’s eligibility card, sit through a 12-hour course that can run $500, then wait out the three-day cooling-off period. Sales exploded in July as Coloradans raced the clock. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte started calling Colorado gunmakers and asking a simple question: do you want to move back to America? Five of the six he reached were already planning the drive north.
New York, Maryland, and Connecticut spent a single week trying to ban Glock-style pistols under the fiction that they are “machine-gun convertible.” The NRA sued. Illinois is still defending PICA, the so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act that outlawed the rifles and magazines law-abiding Americans actually own. Trump’s DOJ filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying Illinois ignored Bruen’s “in common use” test. New Jersey still rations handguns one per month — a scheme the Ninth Circuit already buried in California, and that NRA and Firearms Policy Coalition are now asking a federal judge to bury in Trenton. Oregon still pretends your right expires at the state line. Gun Owners of America just sued over that. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed an “assault weapons” ban and watched background checks double as Virginians voted with their wallets before July 1. A judge has already put part of that ban on ice. The Trump DOJ told the gun-grabbers to stay tuned.
Seattle’s mayor wants “sensitive place” carry bans after crime she cannot control. Montgomery County, Maryland, passed a carry ban and “ghost gun” rules on a Democrat council vote. Glendale, California, jacked its own carry application toward $1,078 before you even count prints, training, and the psych chair. Same script. Different letterhead.
The Free States Vs The Marxist Blue States
The other America is moving the other way. Twenty-nine states now recognize constitutional carry — no government permission slip required to exercise a right the Founders wrote in ink. Red-state attorneys general, 27 of them, have asked the Supreme Court to say out loud what every hunter and every cop already knows: magazines that hold more than ten rounds are in common use and are protected. Courts have knocked down waiting periods in New Mexico, ammo-check regimes in California, and nonresident CCW bans. The direction of the law is not the direction of San Jose. San Jose is the leftover.
That is why this lawsuit matters. For four years the Biden Justice Department treated the Second Amendment as a problem to be managed. Trump’s DOJ built a Second Amendment Section inside Civil Rights, put Harmeet Dhillon over the division, and started treating abusive local licensing the way the Department used to treat abusive local voting rules: as a civil-rights violation. They already moved on Los Angeles County’s permit delays. San Jose is next. The complaint asks for a permanent injunction against “abusive licensing fees.” If the court means Bruen when it says Bruen, San Jose loses.
The deeper point is older than any fee schedule. You do not need a city council’s permission to speak, to pray, or to print a newspaper. You should not need a $1,600 permission slip — plus insurance, plus a psych eval, plus a 10-day wait, plus an 11 percent tax — to carry a tool for the defense of your life. A right that only the rich can afford is not a right. It is a privilege the government rented back to you.
Shall not be infringed was not written with an asterisk for Silicon Valley.
Trump’s DOJ just sued the asterisk. Democrats intend on gun confiscation as they have admitted, once they take power. Since voter fraud still has not been stopped, this seems to be the likely result in November, if Trump does not have some deal in place with the Deep State masters. For they have 20-30 million fake votes used in the past, which can easily be sued to help the Democrats steal both houses in November. Then, the possible end of American freedom is at hand. A real revolution, in one form or another will be a certainty. See this link for details and what the Democrats said they plan on doing. – And remember…
They already said it out loud. Watch the clips. See the plan. Read what America looks like if we lose. – Click here, read the letter on the bottom as well. Spread the word. America is worth fighting for.
–— The Whatfinger News Team: Ben ad Beth, with Lisa, Grok on edits and graphics
References
- Justice Department Sues San Jose for Unconstitutional $1600 Firearm Permit Fee
- DOJ Sues San Jose, Alleging $1,600 Firearm Fee Is Unconstitutional
- DOJ Sues San Jose over ‘Presumptively Unconstitutional’ CCW License Fee
- DOJ sues to stop California city’s ‘exorbitant’ $1,600 gun fee
- EXCLUSIVE: Trump DOJ Sues California City Over Gun Permitting Scheme ‘Reserved For Privileged Few’
- Cost-Prohibitive Gun Control: San Jose Concealed Carry Permit Costs $1,443
- Gun Rights Group Sues San Jose over Gun Owner Insurance Requirement
- San Jose Gun Owners Now Required to Pay Annual Fees, First in the US
- California Becomes First State to Pass 11 Percent Tax on Guns and Ammunition
- California’s ‘One Gun a Month’ Law is Unconstitutional, Court Affirms
- Two Shot, One Dead, at World Cup Fan Zone in Gun-Controlled California
- Blue state governors join gun-grabbing efforts by targeting Glock pistols
- Colorado’s Planned Purchase Permit System For Semi-Auto Guns Just Got Slapped With Legal Hurdle
- WATCH: Red state gov urges firearms makers to ditch Colorado amid its anti-gun push
- Virginia gun sales spike ahead of July 1 assault weapons ban signed by Gov. Spanberger
- Trump’s push for national concealed carry reciprocity would protect good guys with guns
- 27 States Ask SCOTUS to Recognize 2A Protects ‘Plus-Ten Magazines’
- Pro-2A Group Sues Oregon Over Out-Of-State Permit Recognition
- Gun-Rights Groups Ask Federal Court To Strike Down New Jersey’s Rationing Scheme
- DOJ Backs Challenge to Illinois PICA ‘Assault Weapon’ Law
Top Features and Vids across all Whatfinger sites right now
- I just got back from California… It’s a SH*THOLE.
- Wayne Allyn Root: If the Democrats gain power, don’t think there won’t be a chance that we’ll wind up dead.
- California and China both started their High Speed Rail projects in 2008? WTF
- Ottawa Runs to Brussels: Canada’s Decline, Carney’s War With Trump, and the EU “Associate Member” Pitch
- Kash Patel’s FIERY Clash with Dem Senator Over FBI Rules on Bestiality
Get on over to Whatfinger.com – Whatfinger News does millions of pageviews a month for a reason…. Truth, Justice, the American way, plus news on the Left as well – all links from all sites gives you the true news. – CLICK HERE 🛑
Drudge Report Alternative
