San Francisco

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San Francisco MTA Punked (bumped)

September 6, 2010 by 3 Comments

The San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority has rather rigid guidelines for the ads they will accept. For example, they won’t take any advertising that “appears to promote the use of firearms.” They even forced the new Will Farrell/Mark Wahlberg movie “The Other Guys” to change their ads so that it featured a can of Mace instead of a pistol.

Poster for GRPC on MTA bus stop (Calguns.net/forums)

However, the MTA was no match for the fearless duo of the CalGuns Foundation and the Second Amendment Foundation. According to Alan Gottlieb, he believes that MTA violated its own ad guidelines because “they believed we were prepared to file a lawsuit on First and Second Amendment grounds if, for any reason, the city didn’t take them.”

Gene Hoffman posted a crytic note on the CalGuns.net forum last night that said:

If anyone lives or works in the City, please stop by the following locations and report back (photos would be awesome) on what, if anything, you see there

Townsend St SS 86ft E/O 4th St F/E – 2
Masonic Ave WS 44ft N/O Hayes St F/N – 1
Geary Blvd NS 61ft E/O Divisadero St F/W – 2
Fulton St NS 94ft W/O 8th Ave F/W – 2
Mission St NS 86ft W/O 8th St F/W – 2
Polk St WS 23ft N/O Sutter St F/N – 1
North Point St NS 44ft W/O Polk St F/E – 1
Jackson St NS 38ft E/O Van Ness Ave F/W – 2
Columbus Ave WS 61ft S/O North Point St F/S – 2
Van Ness Ave WS 34ft S/O Greenwich St F/N – 1
McAllister St NS 28ft W/O Webster St F/E – 1
Lincoln Way SS 30ft W/O 21st Ave F/W – 1
Stockton St WS 181ft S/O Clay St F/N – 1
Haight St SS 39ft W/O Pierce St F/W – 1
Geary Blvd NS 24ft E/O 3rd Ave F/E – 1
Main St ES 269ft S/O Howard St F/N – 2

-Gene

Speculation ran rampant that this was going to be another LCAV non-event or other guerrilla action against the anti-gunners. The result is what you see above – an in-your-face poster (with a shotgun) that promotes the Gun Rights Policy Conference in San Francisco. These posters appear on 15 bus stops scattered around San Francisco.

Way to go CGF and SAF! There is nothing like taking a guerrilla war to the heart of the enemies’s territory.

UPDATE: If you go to the link above to Calguns.net, you can see more of the GRPC posters around San Francisco.

UPDATE II: According to a report from CBS News, the San Francisco MTA is investigating whether the GRPC posters violate their policy on ads promoting the use of firearms. It looks like they are getting pressure from the SF Board of Supervisors to take them down. All of this publicity is making Alan Gottlieb happy. If they take down the ads, he’d be even more happy saying ” “All I can do is pray that all the publicity will make them want to decide to take down the ads — so we can sue!”

UPDATE III: Thanks to a reader of Snowflakesinhell.com, I see that the New York Times is now covering the story.

On Friday, riders waiting at a bus stop displaying the pro-gun poster seemed unaware that they had previously been shielded from such images. “I don’t want to see guns,” said Zsuzsanna Legradi, a 42-year-old gardener. “No one should have guns. It is bad enough that people have knives.”

Imagine her horror at seeing the Toyota Prius in this post.

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San Francisco – Neighbors Object to Lone Gun Store Reopening

August 31, 2010 by 2 Comments

In a surprisingly positive column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Phil Bronstein describes the fight that High Bridge Arms is having to endure in order to reopen their store. The store was closed temporarily and the North Bernal Alliance and three other neighborhood groups are fighting their reopening.

The neighborhood groups are asking the city authorities to deny the store the license it needs to operate. They say their members don’t want a gun store “near our homes and/or schools.” And, officially, they say they don’t object to people owning guns. However, as one member said:

They’d just “rather have something the neighborhood could enjoy – a laundry or wine and cheese shop.”

According to Yahoo Local, San Francisco has 131 specialty food stores and another 64 specializing in natural and organic foods. This is in addition to 675 grocery stores. Do they really need one more wine and cheese store?

High Bridge Arms has been in business for over 50 years and serves a good bit of the law enforcement community. The local police captain said they have never had any trouble due to the store. That said, he is getting 10-1 negative to positive e-mails about the store.

Fortunately, the local branch of the Pink Pistols is rooting for the store. Tom, the local chapter president said:

“California now has a law that you can’t receive ammunition through the mail. And many people in San Francisco don’t have cars.” Therefore, a city gun store is helpful and encourages the use of mass transit.

As Bronstein noted, Tom was trying to put a “green” spin on it. Tom did make the point that High Bridge is “a lawful business conducted in a lawful way for people who want to lawfully participate in the shooting sports.”
 
Bronstein concludes by urging everyone just to be a little sensible about it.
 
The article generated a lot of comments as one might expect. However, they weren’t as bad (for the most part) as one might expect. Here is a sample:

OMG… I’ve read a page or two of thoughts from the readers, I can’t believe these are chron readers? My second thought was, I didn’t know there was a gun store in SF.

This store, when it was open, always had the most insipid, tasteless posters in its windows advertising their brand name weapons for sale (Glock for example). The last one I noticed was an oversize glossy poster of a scantily clad blond white nurse in white pumps and white mini skirt being “saved” by white steroid junkies in kevlar from dark skinned perps. This owner may be mild mannered when the press calls but the fantasies he perpetuates with his adolescent window displays are everything but(t).

Guns are evil.

Are you kidding, a local “Gun Store” in San Francisco? We’ve even tried to close down a popular sandwich shop in the Castro simply because neighbors are complaining about the smell of bacon. “I love the smell of bacon in the morning… Smells like, Victory!” What next?

I am a happy card-carrying progressive on just about every issue out there. However, I am also a happy card-carrying member of the NRA. So, if these whiny Volvo-driving Montessori types think that guns are somehow “evil,” I’d like to remind them that so are criminals. Get out of 1968, kids. Our state needs a concealed carry law.

If the majority of comments are any indication, there may be hope for San Francisco after all.

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City of San Francisco Must Have a Big Legal Budget

August 12, 2010 by

From the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

SAN FRANCISCO EYES AMMUNITION
REGISTRY – CCRKBA VOWS LAWSUIT

BELLEVUE, WA – Today’s revelation that the City of San Francisco might consider an ammunition registry scheme brought a promise from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms that a lawsuit would quickly follow.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said in a report in the San Francisco Examiner that Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier is working with the City Attorney’s Office to “craft legislation” regarding an ammunition registry shows the city has learned nothing from its defeat in court over a 2005 gun ban proposition. CCRKBA joined the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association and other plaintiffs in the lawsuit that nullified the ban because it violates state statute. Now that the Second Amendment has been incorporated to the states by the U.S. Supreme Court, proposals like this one are even more dubious, he observed.

“It appears that Alioto-Pier is trying to be too clever by half,” Gottlieb said. “It’s a de facto registration scheme hiding behind a make-believe effort to crack down on violent crime, and she knows it. We will fight it.”

He noted that it is ironic for the city to be considering such an idea on the eve of the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 24-26 at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency hotel. Gun rights activists and experts from across the nation will gather at the hotel to discuss recent court cases, current legal actions and anti-gun proposals like the one now reportedly being formulated by Alioto-Pier.

“It would seem to me that with the state’s economy in tatters, cutbacks in public safety budgets and federal courts mandating that more criminals must be released from prisons that the city would not make it harder for citizens to defend themselves,” Gottlieb stated. “But in San Francisco, it is politically fashionable to penalize honest people for the misbehavior of the criminal element. It makes you wonder whose side the government is on.

“You can bet we’ll be discussing this at our conference in September,” he concluded. “Ms. Alioto-Pier has an open invitation to attend and explain her scheme to a room full of experts.”

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Spoofing the Anti’s

July 15, 2010 by 1 Comment

Oh, those crazy kids at CalGuns.net. They planned a pro-gun demonstration at the annual fund-raising dinner for the Legal Community Against Violence in San Francisco. Only they didn’t show. It was a spoof from the beginning as they knew LCAV monitored their message board. They wanted to get LCAV all hot and bothered and worried. It worked.

From the last post explaining their actions:

Maskirovka: “The means of securing combat operations and the daily activities of forces; a complexity of measures, directed to mislead the enemy regarding the presence and disposition of forces, various military objectives, their condition, combat readiness and operations, and also the plans of the commander… maskirovka contributes to the achievement of surprise for the actions of forces, the preservation of combat readiness and the increased survivability of objectives.” – source: Jon Latimer, Deception in War, The Overlook Press, Woodstock & New York 2001

I’m sure that many of you are curious about the results of the LCAV protest. Well, they hired extra security, alerted the hotel to the potential for protests and apparently called in the SFPD to intimidate us.

But we never planned to show in the first place.

As much fun as it would have been to organize a great big ruckus, it was much more fun watching them scramble about in fear that the gun nuts were going to heap insult upon the injury of McDonald at their pyrrhic victory dinner.

And we didn’t have to expend an ounce of energy.

What was the point?

Well, we learned a bunch.

1) That past actions have convinced them to take us seriously. Calgunner attendance at City Council meetings, legislative hearings and court cases has demonstrated that we’re able to mobilize a motivated group of activists on short notice. We’ve proven to them that we show up. We’ve shown that we’re effective, too. Emeryville’s revision of their proposed ammunition ordinance proved that.

2) That they’re paying attention to us. We long suspected that LCAV was monitoring our communications. It’s one of the reasons that CGF boardmembers are circumspect when discussing legal strategies. So, please be patient when folks are using cryptic language to discuss options for regaining our rights.

3) That now they don’t know when we’re bluffing. We’ve spoofed them twice so far. Who knows what other kinds of wild goose chases we can send them on? It will be fun to learn.

4) That they’re afraid of us. Despite my assertions (and requirements) that this “action” not allow any physical contact, trespassing, etc., LCAV felt it necessary to mobilize the police and additional security.

5) That they’re irrational. In every interaction that we’ve had with the antis, we’ve been polite. We’ve been well dressed, well spoken, chivalrous and respectful. We’ve been met with profanities, threats and incivility. I wouldn’t be surprised if local officials are starting to take notice the difference in style.

Make no mistake, folks. We’re winning this fight.

Sometimes it’s not what you do, but what the other side thinks that you’re willing to do that causes the most disruption.

I’d like to offer up a special thanks to all the folks who came together to make this happen. This was a fun little exercise.

Calgunners rock!

Read the whole thread to see the anticipated demonstration. It really starts to move along at page 3.

Were the Calgunners taken seriously? Yes they were. Ezra Denney was the LCAV staffer in charge of the event. On his Facebook page he put that they “might be meeting some wacky folks tonight. Protesters are fun!”

The San Francisco PD showed up in full force with extra motorcycle and bicycle cops assigned to the dinner and anticipated protest. And as they said on the CalGuns.net board, “on this date in San Francisco: nothing happened.” You can see the pictures of the additional cops here.

I started to read their preparations last night and they had me totally fooled. From the discussions, I was expecting some sort of Code Pink demo with pictures of protesters being led away in handcuffs.Checking back this morning I found out that nothing had happened.

It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.