No more guns.  Given the dismal election results, the best thing on TV last night was when William Shatner’s character on Boston Legal, Denny Crane, shot a rapist and murderer of 13-year-old girl in both knee caps to get out of having to serve as his court-appointed lawyer.

I’m sure that the anti-gun folks in SF, who passed a poorly written, easily challenged gun ban last night, were horrified by this depiction of guns on television.  The SF voters passed  Proposition H, which bans the manufacture, distribution, sale and transfer of firearms and ammunition within San Francisco.   It prohibits residents from possessing guns within city limits, unless they are required for professional reasons (cops, security guards, etc.).  The new law takes effect on January 1, 2006, although residents are allowed to surrender their guns to the police up until April 1 without any penalty. 

The NRA has already announced plans to file a lawsuit challenging the ban.  Even Gavin Newson, the pretty boy mayor who wants to be all things to all people, acknowledged that the law was poorly written and would be easily challenged.  One of the biggest legal problems the ban faces is the state law which keeps a local municipality from passing stricter gun laws than those that exist at the state level.

It defies logic to argue that taking guns from people who have legally purchased them will reduce crime.  Just look at Washington D.C.’s experience.  The district banned guns in 1976, yet the Department of Justice found that guns accounted for 80 percent of Washington D.C.’s homicides between 1985 and 1994.  Wow, do ya think maybe it’s the bad guys—the people who don’t legally purchase their guns—that are committing gun crimes??  

That’s why the San Francisco Police Officers Association opposed Proposition H, declaring that “When we disarm honest, law-abiding citizens, we contribute to empowering criminals and endangering society-at-large.”   Well said.

We don’t like military recruiters (but we like federal money more).  In a hysterical act of political cowardice, San Francisco put a proposition on the ballot which is a “declaration of policy that the people of San Francisco oppose the federal government’s use of public schools to recruit students in the military.”   The measure’s authors stopped short of actually banning military recruiters because they knew that they could lose federal money if they did so.  See, the liberals in SF are only so principled.  In the end, their addiction to federal money trumps their ideology.   

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.