The San Jose city council on Tuesday voted to introduce ordinance requiring gun owners to pay a fee and carry liability insurance, the legal step of its kind in the US.

The measures are aimed at incentivizing safer behaviour among the Silicon Valley city’s residents and at reducing the financial burden of gun violence on taxpayers.

The proposal to introduce liability insurance was passed 10-1, while the proposal to impose a fee on gun owners was passed 8-3.

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Encouraging popular support for the ordinance, Democratic Mayor Sam Liccardo said that San Jose residents had to bear an estimated financial burden of $442 million annually due to gun-related costs.

“Certainly the Second Amendment protects every citizen’s right to own a gun. It does not require taxpayers to subsidize that right,” the Mayor said at a press conference on Monday, ahead of the vote on Tuesday night.

However, the ordinance will have to be approved at its final reading next month, if it is to become a law from August.

The ordinance, if approved, will require San Jose gun owners to pay an annual fee of $25 directed to a non-profit set up to distribute funds for cases related to gun violence and to prevent gun-related crime. It will also require gun owners to sign up for insurance that would cover the costs of damage caused by their weapons.

People who fail to comply with the requirements could have their firearms impounded.

While the new ordinance, if enacted into a law, may help disincentivize gun violence, gun rights groups have threatened to take legal action to block it.

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For instance, Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights and executive director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights, told CNN, “If the San Jose City Council actually votes to impose this ridiculous tax on the Constitutional right to gun ownership, our message is clear and simple: see you in court.”

Critics, meanwhile, have criticised the new ordinance, arguing that it punishes law-abiding gun owners and does not do enough to address the root causes of gun violence.