Thread: Proposed San Francisco Gun Ban a Bad Idea

http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/ ... 9207.shtml

Proposed San Francisco Gun Ban a Bad Idea
By Alan Gottlieb
MichNews.com
Aug 24, 2005



Banning the lawful possession of anything has never stopped people from getting it, and it should be a no-brainer in the City of San Francisco, where citizens are well-educated and intelligent, that the proposed ban on the sale or manufacture of firearms and possession of handguns will not prevent criminals from arming themselves.

The idea is evidently so bad that at least one of the original sponsors of the measure, City Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, has withdrawn her name from the ballot measure. Why the others continue to push this measure makes little sense, because a similar ban more than 20 years ago was struck down by the courts after the Second Amendment Foundation sued the city and then-mayor Dianne Feinstein.

Gun bans are purely a form of making a social statement, because only a raving lunatic could ever seriously believe that disarming law-abiding citizens, thus making them even more vulnerable to crime, would ever remove guns from the hands of criminals. By their very nature, criminals ignore existing law, and legislation t hat would make their victims easier prey can only make these thugs happier.

In recent years, legislation passed in Sacramento has demonstrated beyond any doubt that the Democrat majority in California's Legislature wants the Golden State to be as unfriendly to firearms owners as possible. Alas, all the emotional rhetoric used to support such legislation has yet to prevent a single crime. Bans on semiautomatic rifles have not stopped gang bangers in the Los Angeles area. They haven't stopped crime in San Francisco, either, or anywhere else in the state for that matter.

What have these laws accomplished? Only to make it nearly impossible for law-abiding citizens to fight back; to burden honest gun owners with onerous regulations designed more to trip them up on technicalities and discourage them from owning firearms than to curb crime.

Proponents of the San Francisco ban – now formally titled Proposition H – have evidently grown up in a fairy tale worl d where good intentions invariably trump real life tragedies.

Proposition H does not pass the smell test for a city with the history of San Francisco. While banning the sale, distribution, transfer and manufacture of all firearms and ammunition within the city, and banning possession of all handguns, there is an exemption for "any City, state or federal employee carrying out the functions of his or her government employment, including but not limited to peace officers" as defined by the California Penal Code.

Translation: Police and a selection of other elites can have handguns in a city where the citizens are disarmed. For generations, the good citizens of San Francisco have created an image and lifestyle diametrically opposed to the concept of a police state where only cops have guns, but now comes Proposition H, which literally creates a police state environment, and far too many people are acting like lemmings, rushing to dive over that precipice, into a polit ical and social abyss.

Perhaps the greatest fraud perpetrated on San Francisco, and the rest of the country, over the past several years is the notion that gun violence is some kind of health epidemic. This is a colossal prevarication, as if gun crime might be removed by minor surgery on the Constitution, or an application of salve to reduce swelling and itching.

The preamble to Proposition H even alludes to a report on gun crime from the San Francisco Department of Public Health. This explains a great deal about the grossly wrong-headed approach to crime that the sponsors of Proposition H have adopted.

We're talking about crime here, not some malady that can be healed by rubbing it with an over-the-counter medication. Backers of this measure are confusing Proposition H with Preparation H.

Preparation H gives relief, but Proposition H will give San Franciscans nothing but grief from people who, it is painfully evident, have taken a rather an al approach to fighting violent crime. At this point in its history, the last thing San Francisco needs is another hemorrhoid.



Copyright by Alan Gottlieb

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Alan Gottlieb is chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org).

"It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion." - Aristotle

It is our constiutional right to bare arms. It is our duty as Americans to take control of our government by force when we the people feel it is necessary.

infringing on the right of the people to bear arms ... closing military bases during a time of war . . . failing to secure the borders allowing millions of foreign nationals to invade our country --- Congress is really doing it's part to make sure our nation is destroyed



from our founding father, Thomas Jefferson

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty"

"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security."

"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."

so much for the Minutemen being "vigilantees"

"Every generation needs a new revolution"

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. "

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."

and now they're funding housing for "illegal aliens" with the help of Our government

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

so that's why Congress talks so much!!