Disarmed
Whenever one ponders life in the DFL-throttled Twin Cities, one must always shrug with scandinavian resignation; it could always be worse.
San Francisco's city government is considering a proposal to ban guns in the city:
San Francisco supervisors want voters to approve a sweeping handgun ban that would prohibit almost everyone except law enforcement officers, security guards and military members from possessing firearms in the city.
The measure, which will appear on the municipal ballot next year, would bar residents from keeping guns in their homes or businesses, Bill Barnes, an aide to Supervisor Chris Daly, said Wednesday. It would also prohibit the sale, manufacturing and distribution of handguns and ammunition in San Francisco, as well as the transfer of gun licenses.
George Orwell, call your office - an aide to assemblybeing Chris Daly gave one of the rationalizations for the proposal (I'll add the emphasis):
"The hope is twofold, that officers will have an opportunity to interact with folks and if they have a handgun, that will be reason enough to confiscate it," he said. "Second, we know that for even law-abiding folks who own guns, the rates of suicide and mortality are substantially higher. So while just perceived to be a crime thing, we think there is a wide benefit to limiting the number of guns in the city."
"Interact".
When a gun is involved, police "interact" with people only one way; at gunpoint. This proposal isn't far from a license to bash down peoples' doors and take their firearms.
One wonders how many of these same city councilbeings are mortified at the "infringements of civil liberties" in the Patriot Act?
The NRA, thank goodness, is
San Francisco on its way to court.
The most galling thing about the bill? Like the symbolic legalization of gay marriage a while back, it's another symbolic stunt by San Francisco's showboating mayor Gavin Newsome.
And as such, it can only encourage people of like mind here in the Twin Cities, the people who've crawled out from under myriad rocks to try to get their neighbors to behave as they'd like (using the full power of government to get their way); the "Damn the Unintended Consequences" crowd.
Posted by Mitch at
November 14, 2005 06:58 AM
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A little math at the suggestion of my buddy at kowabunga.com. San Fran has what, about a million people? Assume 5% have handguns (50,000). People who own handguns usually have more than one so 100,000 handguns. Now the fair market value of these guns are a minimum of $100 a piece. Disregarding the constitutional problems with confiscating them, this would cost the city $10,000,000 to re-emburse the people for their guns. These numbers are of course off the top of my head estimates, but I would expect them to be relatively conservative.
Posted by: billhedrick at November 14, 2005 11:07 AMargh! kowabunga.org
Posted by: billhedrick at November 14, 2005 11:08 AMI love how lefties invoke the word "folks" when they are trying to be, well, folksy. It generally is followed by some unbelievable condescension -- such we're doing this for the good of gun owners, so they don't shoot themselves (unspoken: since they are clearly a bunch of knuckle dragging mouth breathers).
Posted by: chriss at November 14, 2005 11:34 AMHope it works as well there as it has in DC.
Fortunately for us, while such an ordninance could easily pass in Minneapolis or St. Paul, it doesn't matter here -- we have a statewide preemption law, and it would be just silly chin music here, rather than expensive, noisome chin music like it is in San Francisco.
Posted by: Joel Rosenberg at November 14, 2005 11:42 AMActually I believe Califorina has the same pre-emption law, and in fact SF did the same thing about a decade ago and was spanked for it then under the preemption ruleing.
Posted by: Shawn at November 14, 2005 12:37 PMBut check out Clayton Cramer's blog for a deeper look at how stupid this law is. For example there is no exemption for Police to own or have weapons off duty. Hence the opposition from the SFPD.
Just remember this is the "Reality Based" community that came up with this.
The measure these "folks" passed requires everyone there to hand in their guns by April 1st. The date can't be a coincidence.
Posted by: Kermit at November 14, 2005 12:40 PMBillHedrick: I didn't see anything mentioning "compensation", only "confiscation". It will only cost them the man hours to collect them and smelting furnace costs to melt them all down.
You can't actually believe that the SF moonbats would take anything fair like that into consideration, do you? I mean, they're dealing with EEEEEEEEEEEVIL GUN OWNERS! They don't DESERVE fair! They're endangering all of Gavin's unwashed friends!
Posted by: Bill C at November 14, 2005 05:08 PM
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