BELLEVUE, WA – Despite opposition from police, media organizations and various organizations to an ill-advised ban on handguns and the sale of firearms and ammunition, Proposition H passed in San Francisco Tuesday, and today, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is joining in a lawsuit to challenge this measure in court.
“If you ban firearms, criminals will not obey the law and only law-abiding citizens will be victimized, first by the ordinance, which we believe violates state statute, and then by the outlaws,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “In addition to all the gun rights organizations and various other groups, the San Francisco Police Officers Association opposed the ban and so did the media. Mayor Gavin Newsom, Senator Dianne Feinstein and others acknowledge that the measure is pre-empted by state law.
“If this measure were to go unchallenged, San Francisco would become a magnet for criminals,” Gottlieb said. “That’s a high price for law-abiding San Franciscans to pay, just so the city’s social Utopians who pushed this ban can feel good about themselves, because that’s really all this ban amounts to; a feel-good act of symbolism without substance.”
Proposition H was authored by San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, who insisted that the law is necessary to reduce the number of firearms in the city. The law prohibits sale of all firearms and ammunition in the city and bans possession of handguns.
“The proponents of this initiative acknowledge it will only ‘reduce’ the number of firearms in the city,” Gottlieb observed. “Enactment of this measure will leave guns in the hands of the criminal element, while disarming the public. Even Daly admits that it will not solve the city’s violent crime problem.
“We are going to court in an effort to protect the rights of law-abiding San Franciscans,” Gottlieb stated. “Twenty years ago, we successfully battled an earlier gun ban in this city, and we’re willing to fight this battle a second time because it is the right thing to do.”