Posted on 12/06/2005 9:58:30 AM PST by kiriath_jearim
The line of fire
Some citizens fear for safety if courts uphold S.F.'s voter-approved ban on handguns
Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, December 5, 2005
For a long time, Margaret Hurst lived in fear.
Gangs control turf just a few blocks from her Mission District apartment in San Francisco, and she's sure a neighbor across the street deals drugs. Her building was broken into four times in one year. She saw teenagers on her street display a gun. And while she was stopped at a red light one day, a man tried to punch in her car window in a case of road rage.
So she bought a handgun. Now Hurst is no longer scared.
"I'll tell you one thing. If I'm going down, I'm taking them with me," said 49-year-old Hurst, who is about as un-Charlton Heston as any woman with a British accent, braided bun and long flowing skirt could be.
After a heated campaign brought the national debate over gun control to San Francisco, the city's famously liberal voters passed a law last month banning the sale, manufacture and distribution of firearms and ammunition within city limits. The measure, which takes effect Jan. 1, also makes it illegal for residents to possess handguns.
And as that date approaches, handgun owners like Hurst are becoming increasingly fearful of the consequences.
"We're exactly the kind of people that should have weapons. We're vulnerable," Hurst said during a recent conversation in her cozy apartment, where she lives with her partner and their two cats. "The guns are not going away unless they absolutely have to."
When 58 percent of the city's voters approved the handgun ban, San Francisco joined only two other cities in the nation with similar laws, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Welcome to San Fransciso a place where we believe the Constitution doesn't include the 2nd Amendment, but does include rights to abortion and gay marriage.
Happens everywhere there's a gun roundup. Keep your piece, Marge.
Too bad. That's what she gets for living in a leftist paradise like SF. Now she can either defy the law or move out. Her choice.
I"ll bet there were that many sold in Raleigh in the last thirty days.
How anyone could willingly choose to live in that city is beyond me.
Gun toting lesbian ping? I just love it! Bet it's a larger group than most would believe.
Last year for Christmas, my husband got me an NRA membership and no, the guy wasn't in trouble for it! Women taking responsibility for their own protection is an idea that is long overdue.
Think of the shop owners, many of whom have a bit of "hardware" in their top drawers. Once again, the (mostly white and "banana" Asian) far left affluent elites prove that they really don't care about the (typically immigrant) small business owners who live in places besides Noe Valley and Pacific Heights.
I'd move to Oakland.
With its ethnic neighborhoods and style of urban development, it is quite appealing to recent immigrants. The way the houses are is ideal for having multiple generations in one house. Plus there are many homes over shops. Like NYC in the day.
When are they going to ban bicycle riding and swimming and automobile driving?
Are not more people killed annually in the US from those activities than from handgun deaths?
"San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality." -Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane
And then there is the old addage, "my pistol has killed less people than Ted Kennedy's car."
"When are they going to ban bicycle riding"
But they LOOOVE bicycle riders - apparently so much that they do nothing when these jackasses slalom between people walking on the sidewalk and nearly mow them down.
I work there, but I live elsewhere, so fortunately, I'm in a building most of the time (maybe spend 25 minutes outside everyday). Between the country-financed drug addicts and bums (which is what they are - I won't buy into this "homeless" jargon crap) a once lovely City is now a perpetual human sewer.
Since the SF handgun ban law passed last month, you'd think that the gun range is a supermarket judging by the amount of activity there lately. It's another example of the 'get yours before they're banned!' phenomenon that California has seen after previous restriction measures such as the 1989 California Roberti-Roos 'Assault Weapons' ban.
Presumably, the SF handgun ban will be overturned in the courts which means that SF will have even more handguns than before the wretchedly ignorant Lib-tard Chris Daly proposed his handgun ban.
Yes, I noticed a lot of bike riding on sidewalks and quite surprised by that.
Yup. the city ain't what it used to be, but I still enjoy a nice walk through Golden Gate Park or down in the Marina district to old Fort Point. God, what a view!
It never ceases to astound me. Making guns criminal, so as to deny criminals use of them.
And the Supreme Court says.............
???
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