BELLEVUE, WA – An offer by anti-gun San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly to cover court costs – in response to a call by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) that he pay for the city’s appeal of a court ruling striking down that city’s handgun ban – was dismissed by SAF as a “lame attempt to deflect responsibility for a failure of leadership.”
Daly’s offer carries what SAF called “a preposterous condition” that the gun industry accept civil liability for the costs of violent crime in San Francisco. SAF is one of four major plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city’s gun ban, approved last November as Proposition H. Earlier this week Superior Court Judge James Warren ruled the ban violates state law.
“The firearms industry,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, “is one of the most heavily-regulated industries in the country. Gun makers are not responsible for crimes committed in San Francisco or anywhere else, and Daly knows it. In numerous rulings, the courts have said that the industry is not liable for the criminal acts of violent urban thugs.
“Not only should Daly pay for the appeal,” Gottlieb said, “he should also sponsor legislation that would require the city – not gun makers – to compensate every violent crime victim in San Francisco that over-worked police can’t protect, and who cannot protect themselves because the city wants to disarm them.
“If Daly wants to point fingers of blame for San Francisco’s crime problems,” he continued, “he should start with the California Legislature, which has incrementally disarmed law-abiding Golden State citizens and stripped away not only their firearms rights, but their ability to fight back.
“He can blame the environment of permissiveness that lets career criminals repeatedly escape justice,” Gottlieb added, “by tying the hands of police and prosecutors, and disabling the courts.
“If Daly seriously wants to do something meaningful about gun crime,” Gottlieb challenged, “he should forget about extorting money from gun manufacturers—punishing them for crimes they didn’t commit—and instead of banning guns, he should lobby Sacramento for a statewide shall-issue right-to-carry law.
“Daly and his ilk have used gun makers and gun rights organizations as scapegoats for the disastrous consequences of their own failed social philosophy,” Gottlieb stated. “But Daly and his contemporaries do not believe in accepting responsibility, instead blaming everyone else for problems their failure of leadership has created.
“You don’t stop criminals by disarming their victims,” Gottlieb said. “We’ll see you again in court, Chris.”