San Francisco has been egregiously short of police officers and detectives - the latter also known as "inspectors" - while unsolved murders remain high and violent crime shows no sign of letting up. The mayor and police chief have seem more interested in marginalia such as enforcing a political speech code against officers producing a satirical video on off hours. Voters, well, they got into the act by......banning handguns last November. Brilliant! But the National Rifle Association challenged Proposition H, and yesterday a San Francisco Superior Court Judge overturned it, as lacking authority under state law. The SF Chron reports a possible appeal is not likely to succeed.

Proposition H, which passed with a 58 percent majority in November, would have outlawed possession of handguns by all city residents except law enforcement officers and others who need guns for professional purposes. It also would have forbidden the manufacture, sale and distribution of guns and ammunition in San Francisco.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren....said California law, which authorizes police agencies to issue handgun permits, implicitly prohibits a city or county from banning handgun possession by law-abiding adults. That law "demonstrates the Legislature's intent to occupy, on a statewide basis, the field of residential and commercial handgun possession to the exclusion of local government entities,'' Warren wrote in a 30-page decision. If the city were allowed to ban handguns within its borders, he said, nearby counties could be flooded by handguns no longer allowed in San Francisco. Such a possibility illustrates the need for gun ownership to be regulated on a state level, Warren said....He declined to consider the ban on sales of other types of guns and ammunitions separately, saying it could not be detached from the handgun ban, the dominant provision of Prop. H.

...City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose office defended Prop. H, will decide whether to appeal the ruling in the next day or two, said spokesman Matt Dorsey....The court to which Herrera would appeal Warren's decision may have sounded the death knell for measures like Prop. H in 1982, when it overturned a San Francisco ordinance forbidding possession of handguns within city limits and said state law left such regulation to the Legislature.

Sure, Measure H went over big with the city's progressives. But there is no social justice in depriving law-abiding citizens of the right to self-defense when hardened criminals and assorted nutbars carry concealed weapons for violent and illegal purposes.

If the ruling holds, this great to city to visit will have become a slightly less absurd place to live. With the cash-strapped Golden Gate Bridge District contemplating a pricey suicide barrier, you would hope that people who actually WANT to live might be allowed to protect themselves against armed criminals. Capiche?

TECHNORATI TAGS: SAN FRANCISCO, GUN BAN, PROPOSITION H, NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION, SAN FRANCISCO SUPERIOR COURT, JAMES WARREN

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at June 13, 2006 08:27 AM

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