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The last gun shop in San Francisco is closing

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Next month will mark the end of an era in San Francisco as the city’s sole remaining gun shop closes its doors. High Bridge Arms has been in business at the same location since the 1950s, but with the next round of city regulations and restrictions on gun dealers (which means just High Bridge) the city fathers have found the straw required to break the camel’s back. It’s a glorious day for liberals. (Fox News)

Business for the last gun shop in the city of 840,000 has been good, according to Alcairo, especially since the store, which caters to law enforcement and outdoors enthusiasts, announced it would close next month.

Situated in the prominent city heart of Mission Street, High Bridge Arms was founded in the mid-1950s by Bob Chow, who competed in the 1948 Olympics 25-yard pistol shooting event. By some accounts a Bay Area institution, it has long been a tourist destination – specially for members of the law enforcement community who visit the city.

“I found the staff to be friendly, decent, law-abiding people who have been harassed by the San Francisco anti-gun crowd for quite some time,” Jim Wilson, a retired sheriff from Alpine, Texas, told FoxNews.com as he recalled stopping by the shop during a visit to San Francisco a few years back.

The new city laws were so far over the top that it’s difficult to imagine them surviving a court challenge, but the owners apparently don’t feel like converting their entire operation into little more than a legal defense fund to keep fighting the liberal legislature. They were going to force them to record videos of every customer in the store and keep those videos available permanently. The personal information of every customer would have to be turned over to the police department each and every week even if there wasn’t a hint of an allegation that any crime had taken place. In short, the rules were designed to force the shop to harass their own customers mercilessly to the point where no reasonable person would want to shop there anyway.

As the general manager viewed it, the writing was on the wall.

“This time, it’s the idea of filming our customers taking delivery of items after they already completed waiting periods,” Alcairo said. “We feel this is a tactic designed to discourage customers from coming to us.

“This year, it’s this and next year will probably be something else,” Alcairo added. “We don’t want to wait for it.”

The reason this is such a huge victory for the Left is that they’ve finally found an escape hatch to go around the courts and the Second Amendment. They were unable to flatly make guns illegal or to order the closure of a legally operated business, but with one strike after another they were able to finally harass them into closing. The real world effect is negligible, of course, since law abiding gun owners can still go somewhere else to purchase their guns, but it’s still a “moral” victory in terms of driving the evil gun shop out of their peace loving neighborhood.

And hey… it’s not like San Francisco is full of crime to the point where citizens would need to arm themselves, right?

 

Steinle

 

By Jazz Shaw September 27, 2015 (Hotair)

Freedom

Supreme Court Urged to Take Up San Francisco Gun Control Case

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ROSEVILLE, CA / January 15, 2015 – No less than 12 state and national civil rights organizations filed a brief in the United States Supreme Court today for a lawsuit challenging a San Francisco gun control ordinance.

According to the plaintiffs’ petition for review, the city’s law “requires all residents who keep handguns in their homes for self-defense to stow them away in a lock box or disable them with a trigger lock whenever they are not physically carrying them on their persons.”

In the amicus (“friend of the court”) brief filed by attorneys Bradley Benbrook and Stephen Duvernay, the gun-rights groups argue that summary reversal of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision “is warranted because [it] is plainly contrary to Heller,” a landmark 2008 ruling that held the Second Amendment protects an individual–rather than a collective–right to keep and bear arms. But the groups also argue that the Supreme Court should hear the case in order to “clarify the standard governing Second Amendment challenges, and to confirm that courts must be guided by text and history rather than judicial interest balancing.”

While some Second Amendment lawsuits have been decided based on the “text, history, and tradition” standard used in Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, a 2010 Supreme Court decision that applied the Second Amendment to states and local governments, many lower courts have since applied weaker standards that lets most gun control laws stand.

“The Ninth Circuit’s lamentable decision in Jackson shows why it is the most overturned circuit court in the nation,” said Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs. “The Supreme Court should take up this case not only to correct a clear wrong, but to stem the tide of judicial resistance in recognizing the right to keep and bear arms as fundamental Constitutional rights.”

“The Second Amendment doesn’t protect second-class rights, and it’s time for courts to take the enumerated right to keep and bear arms at least as seriously as they do unenumerated rights like abortion.”

Parties to the amicus brief (in order of appearance) are:

  • Firearms Policy Coalition
  • Second Amendment Foundation
  • The Calguns Foundation
  • Firearms Policy Foundation
  • California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees
  • The Madison Society
  • Florida Carry
  • Hawaii Defense Foundation
  • Illinois Carry
  • Maryland Shall Issue
  • Commonwealth Second Amendment
  • Virginia Citizens Defense League
  • West Virginia Citizens Defense League

The brief can be viewed at https://www.firearmspolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/14-704-Jackson-v-SF-amicus-2015-1-15.pdf.

Espanola Jackson, et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, et al., was filed in 2009 by lawyers for 6 San Francisco residents, the National Rifle Association, and the San Francisco Veteran Police Officers Association.