San Francisco gun ban ruled null and void
Posted on January 13th, 2008 by bile Categories and Tags: Uncategorized, 2nd Amendment, Board of Supervisors, California, California State Court of Appeals, Chris W. Cox, freedom, guns, law-abiding citizens, liberty, National Rifle Association, New Hampshire, politics, property, regulation, San Francisco, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, your rightshttp://www.hawaiireporter.com/…
The California State Court of Appeals announced today their decision to overturn one of the most restrictive gun bans in the country, following a legal battle by attorneys for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and a previous court order against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. “Today’s decision by the California State Court of Appeals is a big win for the law-abiding citizens and NRA Members of San Francisco,” declared Chris W. Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist.
In 2005, NRA sought an injunction against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to prevent them from enacting one of the nation’s most restrictive gun bans. NRA won the injunction, but the City’s mayor and Board of Supervisors ignored the court order and approved a set of penalties, including a $1,000 fine and a jail term of between 90 days and six months, for city residents who own firearms for lawful purposes in their own homes.
Good to hear that even in California laws like this can be shot down. It amazes me how people can willfully ignore moral and practical aspects of gun ownership. Gun prohibition does not work any better than drug prohibition. Those who wish to do harm with a gun will usually have to motivation to acquire one. I’ve met several people who advocated gun prohibition and when I bring up the ease of acquiring one they dismiss it, assuming that it is difficult to obtain one. They have no evidence, they have no reason to think this way besides they don’t know anyone who they could get one from. Or they don’t realize they don’t. They always admit that while they may not know a drug dealer explicitly they could acquire pot in less than a day of trying. Guns aren’t much different. Then you have the statistics on gun ownership and crime. New Hampshire having some of the least restrictive gun laws has some of the lowest crime. This is true for many other states with lax gun restrictions. Correlation does not indicate causation of course but many gun prohibition advocates talk as if it’d be Hollywood Wild Wild West if people were allowed to have and carry guns. I was at the Liberty Forum last weekend with many people open carrying, there were plenty of heated arguments and not a single gun drawn in anger or shot (except on Thursday when they went to the shooting range.) People have the right and in some cases the obligation to protect themselves from individuals who would do them harm. A gun is a tool to help perform that self defense. You can read Rational Review for a few days to see the number of people who do that every day.
14 Responses to “San Francisco gun ban ruled null and void”
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January 14th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Guns are indeed easy to acquire.
The fact that New Hampshire has a low crime rate is more easily linked it’s climate and the fact that it isn’t very densely populated.
The liberty forum is an example of many people who want to advocate gun-ownership and open-carry policies. I sure as hell hope they were well behaved. It is not at all indicative of what would happen if everyone started carrying guns.
A gun can be a tool to perform self defense. I agree. So can a fist, a car, a nuclear weapon and a solarbinite bomb. You need to weigh individual responsibility versus group safety. We do it every day when we commute to work. To say x is just a tool for y is true, but it doesn’t prove much.
January 14th, 2008 at 9:38 am
I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Yes it’s not very densely populated but Manchester is their largest city and their crime rates aren’t that bad vs national average. Rhode Island, the second most densely populated state, gun laws aren’t too bad, though they require a permit to carry, and yet they are 43rd of 51 in violent crime. I would also suspect that a decently large percentage of those living in the least populated states are in higher density areas. They aren’t counting area where people live but the total area of the state. NYC is going to be very dense regardless of the density of the rest of the state. DC has the highest crime rates in the nation and yet has I believe the strictest gun laws and still has the highest firearm deaths per capita. I’ve not looked at where those numbers come from but I’m generally suspisious of those types of stats. Does it include cops killing people? Accidental deaths? With gun crime stats if you are picked up with pot and have a gun that’s counted usually as a gun crime in addition to a drug crime. So they can be misleading. How about Florida? It’s more than twice as densely populated as NH and:
Who is talking about everyone carrying guns? I never made that comment. I’m talking about the right to own and carry. I’m not advocating this, this or this. There are lots of states which have right to carry laws. I’m willing to bet that far far less than 50% of the citizens of those states carry, ever. Besides… according to most who oppose gun rights, if gun laws were relaxed than it would be something out of a Western. Why would Liberty Forum attendees be exempt from that claim? Aren’t gun rights supporters supposedly hillbilly secessionist gun crazies?
I disagree. Saying "can be" is like saying "A hammer can be used as a tool to put nails into wood." Who speaks like that unless they are pushing a particular viewpoint? Guns are tools for hunting, self defense and sport. Those are the primary selling points. I could use a gun to pound nails but it’s not a primary intended use. Also, neither a nuclear or solarbinite bomb are self defensive weapons. The former will most likely affect more than just your immediate target and the latter definitely does unless you are already at the end of humanities time in the universe. A gun in use can really only affect at most a small group of individuals. Therefore there is no legitimate reason to suspect that the mere ownership of such a device amounts to direct threat of harm to those around the owner.
January 14th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I think it’s easy to prove that firearm restrictions don’t work, but it’s difficult to prove that ownership of firearms decreases crime. Look at gang crime. Criminals involved in it knowing that members of opposing gangs have firearms and are probably carrying them. Yet they still choose to engage each other. The mentality would just shift to cheapen life. People would still commit crimes because the underlying social factors are still there.
You know that I (and most other people) know better than that. "Gun crazies" are usually the most responsible firearms owners you will ever meet.
A gun can effect several people and they are quite dangerous. It’s up there with fire accelerants and automobiles in terms of things that can be dangerous to those around you. Granted it doesn’t have the destructive range of nuclear weapons or solarbinite bombs but it can still be quite far reaching. Take this scenario for example: You are walking through a crowded subway and someone tries to pick your pocket. You pull a gun. You’ve just endangered a lot of people around you.
January 14th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
So lets not try. I really don’t care if it does or not. I’ve a right to self defense. A gun is a tool for self defense. I want to have one. Done.
You don’t spend enough time in NYC. I have gotten crap several times from people who’ve read my "This is what a responsible gun owner looks like" pin or heard me talking about being a gun owner. They all thought that military and police primarily should be the only one’s with guns and that it’s generally people who do have guns otherwise are a bit off or paranoid.
Right… that’s what I said. "Small group of individuals." And if you harm someone else than you’ve fucked up and are responsible? Where do you draw the lines of defense? So a guy walks into a crowded restaurant and starts blowing people away. He kills 20+ people. Want to bet that if even 1 person had a gun on them the probability of that high a death count is greatly reduced? Look at Virginia Tech vs. that Church shooting a few weeks ago. Some people in the church were packing heat and the murderer was put down.
You can not be seriously be placing a hand gun and a nuke in the same sentence in terms of destructive power. A random gunman who is unchallenged can kill maybe a few hundred. A challenged gunman maybe a dozen. That’s not "far reaching." That’s entirely localized. One is usually in visual distance of a gunman. A nuke will kill hundreds of thousands no problem. As far as I’ve read a majority of gun related deaths are criminal on criminal. They are probably fighting over drugs. Guns are not dangerous. Dangerous people with guns are dangerous. They are in a high risk high gains situation. Of course they don’t care much that their opponents have guns too. However, they rarely go out on the street and have a duel. Drivebys seem to me used more often. So their actions are definitely affected by the opponents ability to defend themselves.
January 14th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
If you reread my post I compared guns to fire accelerants and automobiles in terms of their propensity for damage. I admitted they are not as far reaching as nuclear weapons. On the subject of nuclear weapons several of your arguments work equally well for them. Nuclear weapons aren’t dangerous, dangerous people with nuclear weapons are dangerous. Do you believe a nuclear weapon is intrinsically dangerous enough that private citizens should not be able to own one? If so, where do you draw the line? How about biological agents, chemical weapons, high explosives, shape charges, grenades, car mounted fully automatic weapons, fully automatic weapons, pistols, firearms, knives, sharpened sticks, rocks, teeth, fists?
As far as gang members killing each other: Even if the tactics change because they both have guns the violence is still there. Guns aren’t a great deterrent to violence they just increase the stakes of the violence.
January 14th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Nuclear weapons are far more intrinsically dangerous than a gun. It’s perfectly reasonable to be fearful of a nuke given that if one where to be unkept and leaked or went off it would very likely harm others. A gun going off in a closet will almost certainly not. As I said it has no defensive use. It is purely offensive and almost certainly will cause collateral damage. If it is in any way possible that a nuke can harm someone while being left alone than it’s dangerous… just like an active volcano is dangerous. If you want to understand the difference you can scan over Mill’s On Liberty. He devotes a good chunk of time on the topic.
You are either ignorant or lying. They are playing in a high risk game where the threat of death is expected. The fact they change their tactics very much means that violence is altered. If there was no deterrent then explain to me why they just don’t walk out face to face? These people would just as quickly take bats, clubs or maces out to kill each other. Whether driven by collectivist ideas (racism,nationalism) or drug money. You aren’t going to stop that violence. You can however stop creating environments where they can thrive, their incentives… like the black market. You can surely find plenty of examples of the threat of violence has deterred the initiation of it. The police do it all the time. Shop owners and home owners do it all the time.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
<sarcasm>Can it be both?</sarcasm>
If every homeowner and shopkeeper bought a gun tomorrow people wouldn’t stop stealing from homes and shops. If you’re lucky crime would shift to something easier, say car robberies. Then lets say people start guarding their cars with dogs so crime shifts to knocking over vending machines. So people start putting explosives in vending machines… What you end up with is a world full of guns, vicious dogs and exploding vending machines. You’re just raising the stakes, cheapening human life and not treating the underlying causes. It’s the same war mentality the very government you rail against has.
A well built, modern nuclear weapon will not harm anyone if left alone. That being said, can I own one?
January 14th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Actually, I’d say that guns deter low level gang violence but raise the stakes for later violence. Bile, do your statistics control for the general decrease in violent crime over the past few years (the link doesn’t span your dates, but this trend has been going on for about 20 years)?
January 16th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Who said there would be? The information would need to propagate through the system. Some may move to less risky situations but your just admitting i’m correct. It deters crime and allows individuals defend themselves. All you can do is create unrealistic, illegitimate, hypothetical situations in an attempt to prove a point… it just proves you have no real argument. I give you stats and facts and you talk about vending machines? You aren’t talking about realistic situations. Raising stakes doesn’t cheapen life… it changes behavior without harm. The threat of violence keeps people inline all the time. You simply deny that fact. You mix ideas. You can’t comprehend the difference between reactive defensive force and offensive aggression.
I have no idea. Which stats are you referring to? I just grabbed some random links. Given that the decrease in violent crimes was relatively uniform I don’t believe it matters much nor would it be easy to do I’d think.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Thank you for your response.
I’m sorry if you find my situations unrealistic and illegitimate. My vending machine comment was an attempt to interject a bit of humor into the situation as I find the idea of threatening people with death as a way of improving the quality of life laughable.
Do you really mean this? How many people want to live in a world where the threat of death is used by the people around them to keep them "in line"? Should I put giant spikes at windshield height around my car to encourage people not to hit me? If the threat of death works so well, does the threat of painful death work even better? Should I carry a flamethrower so I can threaten people with immolation as opposed to a measly gunshot wound?
Crime is an issue of socialization. No amount of threat of force will act as a deterrent in the long term. You may cause a temporary shift and you may cause more of the nation to arm themselves, but in the end crime will still exist. People will just be more willing to get shot.
I don’t wish to go through the statistics argument with you right now. I think it would fracture this dialog all to hell. Suffices to say you and I put an emphasis on different types of knowledge.
Also, I never got a straight answer to my nuclear weapon question.
Finally regarding beetlbumjl’s comment I’d just like to state that I find the "general decrease in violent crime" over the past few years very interesting.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Would you stop it. Just stop combining the meaning of words. "Threat of violence" is not a synonym of "threat of death." It’s not. Period. I said "threat of violence."
Why do I end up paying income taxes? Because if I don’t I will be fined. If I don’t pay the fine men with guns will come to my home and put me into a concrete and steel box. If I refuse to go with these men they will use violence to make me go. If I fight back I will likely be harmed more and possibly killed. Why do I not park on the yellow marked sides of the road? Because if I do I will most likely get a fine. If I don’t pay the fine men with guns will come to my home and put me into a concrete and steel box. If I refuse to go with these men they will use violence to make me go. If I fight back I will likely be harmed more and possibly killed. Why do I get my car registered? Because if I don’t I will be fined. If I don’t pay the fine men with guns will come to my home and put me into a concrete and steel box. If I refuse to go with these men they will use violence to make me go. If I fight back I will likely be harmed more and possibly killed. Why did I bother to get a FID? Because if I didn’t I will be fined. If I don’t pay the fine men with guns will come to my home and put me into a concrete and steel box. If I refuse to go with these men they will use violence to make me go. If I fight back I will likely be harmed more and possibly killed. Why doesn’t an average person just walk off with a Xbox360 from Best Buy? Because if I they do and get caught they will likely be fined or worse put in to a jail cell. If they decline either of those they will be harmed. If a cop starts flashing red and blue lights at you while driving down the street… what do most people do? Pull over. Why? Those who take off… why? Fear of individuals being violent towards their person.
Notice a pattern? The threat of violence? It’s everywhere. It’s the incentive to not do things. It’s one of the reasons you own a dog. Is it so hard for you to see that self preservation affects people’s actions?
You can’t see the forest for the trees. The threat of violence absolutely is a deterrent to crime. Just as it’s a deterrent to all kinds of things. This isn’t just about crime. It does work in the long term. Just because it doesn’t work 100% doesn’t mean it does work at all. I simply can not comprehend how you could utter such a thing. No one has ever, ever, said that crime will go away. You are reading imaginary words in these arguments and it’s highly frustrating. Read what I type not what you want to read.
You can have a nuke…. if you can afford it. I don’t care what you have given it doesn’t threaten my property (my person being my property.)
January 17th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
While I’m happy to be in the thick
of a argument on this topic,
your frustration is palpable
through response length it’s calculable
so I leave you with a limerick.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:40 am
This quote reminded me of this argument:
February 4th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Perhaps because I’m generally in agreement with Rothbardian anarcho capitalism.