Governator going down in flames; hand gun and military bans in SF

San Francisco is now the most pacifist city in the U.S. It has banned handguns and military recriuiters. Maybe now it's time to ban police guns as well. Anyone want to write up an initiative?

But the terminator was soundly defeated.....BWAHHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
Sniff...sniff....I smell.....Republican tears!!!!! Bwahahahahah!

It shall be the policy of the city and county of san francisco for all city, county, state and federal peace officers and retired peace officers to be armed solely with laser sighted water squirt guns. All other persons may carry water balloons. A city agency, funded by sales of hetch hetchy reservoir water, shall offer, free-of charge, voluntary licenses to carry concealed water balloons. By law, any records produced in the course of a background check on concealed water balloon licensees shall be used solely for the purpose of granting a license, and destroyed immediately by placing in a used ballot box and dumping in the bay.

deanosor wrote;

"Maybe now it's time to ban police guns as well."

This is an important point, when many shootings are a result of trigger happy police shooting suspects. Another factor is if handguns are banned form the people of SF, then the police are the only ones left holding the guns..

For all the liberals shouting victory, all that happened is that things didn't get worse in this election..

With guns we are citizens.
Without guns we are subjects.

sorry for the cliche.

What about criminals and gang members? Think they'll turn their guns in?
Poor SF. When the crime rates climb up to D.C, levels, you will have only the hippies that run the place to blame. And what about the next earthquake? Think Katrina. You really want only the bad guys having guns? Maybe you would like to protect yourselves?

QUOTE
For all the liberals shouting victory, all that happened is that things didn't get worse in this election.. END-QUOTE

yes, that's true, thing didn't get better, they just didn't get worse. but the extent to which they would have gotten worse if the governer actor person had his way is pretty significant.

the right wong uses the initiative process quite wellleaving everyone to the left of arnold thing on the defensive. I don't think the answer is for us to start trying to beat the right wing at their own game by running our own initiatives, but I also don't think abstaining from the process is the answer.

Anyone have any ideas? (I mean, like, concrete ideas. " general strike" and "revolution now" aren't really very useful.)

thugs like the cops who were running around and looting all over the place? (and not just to do their cop jobs either)

numerous people have been found with bullets in the backs of their heads, having been shot in what appears to be execution style. many suspect it was the organized white vigilantes seen roaming the streets after the flooding, making the most of an opportunity to do a little urban hunting, or possibly even those scores of AWOL looting cops

white people with guns massed at the bridges/freeways that led out of town and told those trying to escape the floodwaters to turn right back around

yeah, guns made it a whole lot better in N.O. and more guns would have made it more better. maybe could have had a little race war. or a small localized civil war with the better armed authorities. more dead = more fun!

. . . having been shot in what appears to be execution style."

How many of them were armed when this happened?

so much for due process, eh? but hey, now that the u.s. govt can run underground global torture networks, why bother with anything the constitution says?

since when has any of this really been about democracy "of, by, and for the people"?

The point I'm making is that those people were murdered because they were not armed. Had they been armed, they would have been able to defend themselves. Most, if not all, would be alive today.

Without arms, the old, the weak and the sick are at the mercy of the young, the strong and the healthy. The unarmed are *always* at the mercy of the armed. There's a name for people who rely on the police to protect them. They are called "victims."

Do you really want to live in a world where the only people with guns are the klan and the gang bangers? Who will protect you from these criminals? The police!?! Gimme a break. 911 is a joke. The police have neither the legal obligation, nor the ability, nor the desire to protect you. At best, they can be expected to show up after it's too late, and you have already been raped and/or murdered, or worse.

To disarm the working class is not in any way progressive. It is, by definition, reactionary. Don't play into the hands of the reactionaries. Don't enable the rapists and murderers. In the unlikely event that this measure is not overturned in the courts, rapists, murderers and thieves from across the Bay Area will flock here, in the full knowledge that their victims will be unable to resist. Is that what you want?

"Had they been armed, they would have been able to defend themselves. Most, if not all, would be alive today."

that's an assumption, not a point of fact

and simple logic can refute it: if those killed execution-style had guns to defend themselves (*assuming* they didn't) then someone would have been killed anyway in a shootout and it's naive to assume the "good guys", whomever they might be, would prevail in any reliable percentage of these shootouts

besides, for all we know, it was the looting cops who killed people who got in their way, and the citizenry will never ever have more guns, bigger guns, than the cops, the national guard/army and other authorities. but, through fearmongering like in the previous comment, too many people have been lulled into thinking that more weaponry makes them more safe.

arms races only lead to higher stakes tension and more deaths (look at the numbers of gun deaths every year in this country versus just about any other country not in an open war). God help us if the average citizen ever commonly owns machine guns and armored vehicles/tanks.

as for what a country with substantially less guns looks like, look no further than France. they have had almost two weeks of massive, Massive, rioting across the entire country, and there has been only one death to date. the rioters don't have many guns to shoot anyone with, if they even wanted to which they very well may not, and the police who have some guns are on strict orders not to shoot anyone, reminded of that order every morning by their captains. in the L.A. King riots, in one US city alone, by contrast, over 50 people were killed in less time than the ongoing disturbances in France now. in N.O. as well, more than that were likely killed by gunfire in the matter of a few days by cops, criminals, so-called vigilantes, you name it. their governor seemed pumped on the idea of shooting "looters". it's a lot easier for people to kill eachother with guns being commonplace in a fearful situation or society and it's a lot easier for the police to justify shooting people left and right when they operate on the same plane as the fearmongers in that large numbers of citizens are potentially dangerous murderers who should be shot first and asked questions later.

This is a fact of life. Disarming the most vulnerable, the old, the sick and the weak, will not stop this from happening. It will merely guarantee that a disproportionate number of victims will be old, weak and sick. If you favor gun confiscation, you are against the old, the weak and the sick, and for the rapists, the murderers and the thieves.

If you are unable to defend yourself, it is far more likely to be you who dies in such an incident, and not your assailant. That's more than a safe assumption. That's the irrefutable lesson of history. People without guns are at the mercy of people with guns.

Guns save many, many, many more lives than they take. I, personally, would be dead today if I hadn't had a gun with me one day in Sonoma. So would four other people. And I didn't even use it. But I had it. The bad guys knew I had it. So they backed down. In that particular incident, the bad guys were Klansmen. There were fifteen of them and five of us. We're alive today because I had the foresight to go there armed. If you think that's a bad thing, and we should have just let them kill us, you're an *sshole. Sorry, but there is no polite way to put it. Only an *sshole would want want Klansmen to be able to murder unarmed people.

Do you really think the Klan, the Nazis, the Aryan Nations, and Christian Identity are going to disarm, just because the government tells them too? Give me a break. Elements of he government have been caught red handed arming these guys under the table. It came out during the Iran-contra investigation. If you want to live in a world where the Klan, the Nazis, the Aryan Nations, and Christian Identity have guns, but we don't, you're a fool.

Gun bans do not disarm the bad guys. They will keep their guns. Then the rest of will be at their mercy. If you want to be at their mercy, that's your right. You have no right to place the rest of us at their mercy against our will. By attempting to disarm us, you are doing the work of our enemies. This is very, very bad politics. Stop now.

well, then, you have a lot of enemies right here in San Francisco because the majority of people here don't buy into your tired fearmongering

"asshole, fool, blah de blah blah" -- bullying from a gun nut, what a surprise

tired-assed NRA arguements for ever more guns in a country that already has an incredibly high gun-death rate compared to just about every other so-called westernized nation: "the bad guys have them, so you had better, too (nevermind that bad guy is a relative term), and you should resist any attempts to reign in the insane numbers of lethal firearms and ammunition so that you can best protect yourself, even if it means the neverending flow of weapons actually means more will fall into the hands of those who would kill you, thereby making you less safe in a country with tens of thousands of gun deaths every year"

people, at least here, aren't buying your arms race crap. the domestic arms race is not cutting deaths by firearms but increasing them

fearmongering only makes those deaths all the more likely. the klan, nazis, and cops all use the same fearmongering to justify their arms build up. some people apparently won't be happy until this country comes undone in another bloody civil war. some of us would rather that not happen.

Do you want more women to be raped? Disarm them. It's as simple as that.

There is a simple scientific method by which we may determine whether or not you are, in fact, an *sshole. All that is necessary is that you answer one question:

Should I have let those Klansmen murder us that day in Sonoma?

Yes or no?

There is a simple scientific method by which we may determine whether or not you are, in fact, a fool. All that is necessary is that you answer one question:

Given the choice between preventing your own murder and using a gun, would you allow yourself to be murdered?

Yes or no?

maybe women can be collectively protected, as every other citizen generally already is today. that's why people organize, so it's not a mad dog-eat-dog world and the weaker can be protected from bullies

should they (or anyone) really be expected to be their only defense? if they can't shoot faster than an attacker, fuck 'em?? all women and people should be running around with concealed weapons???

gun nut gets hardcore graphic to stoke even more fear

what's next in your line of fearmongering? male-on-male gang rape at gunpoint? some dismemberment at gunpoint, perhaps? eaten alive by criminal gun-toting dogs?

simple scientific method, huh?

ignoring that asking someone a yes-or-no question is not scientific, nor is namecalling, I have an actual scientific question for you

show me the proof that you were 100% going to be murdered that day. (at least tell a believable story.) you can see the future, perhap? prove it. show us the science. and if they were so 100% determined to kill you, and there was 15 of them, why on earth would one little gun be enough to scare away these murderers? if murderinng you was so set in stone, pre-determined, and important to them, wouldn't they have been willing to take a little bit of loss to accomplish it? you certainly couldn't have shot and/or killed them all before your own death, unless your weapon was automatic with a large magazine. also, doesn't your testimony here that the klan was run off just by seeing your one scary gun contradict what you said earlier about the klan stockpiling guns?

I'm not answering any questions based on your improbable interpretation of your antecdote until you can show your little story to have a little more basis in fact

Science?

Do pro- and anti-gun folks in SF actually bother to read anything other than snippets of partisan propaganda?

Consult the following study, and others like it, and try to learn something:

FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE
A CRITICAL REVIEW

Committee to Improve Research Information and Data on Firearms

Charles F. Wellford, John V. Pepper, and Carol V. Petrie, editors

Committee on Law and Justice

Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, D.C.
http://www.nap.edu

San Francisco made the wrong decision in creating a firearms ban for several reasons:

1) We should not set this precedent that it's acceptable to discount freedoms given to us in the Bill of Rights. I don't want any of it taken away. Today, guns; tomorrow, speech.

2) Do you honestly think the people who are commiting crimes are going to follow the law on this?

3) I don't want all of the power in the hands of the government. If something happens, we will not be able to form a militia and revolt. Why do you think the second amendment was written? Our founding fathers had to face a corrupt colonial government without being allowed arms, and knew that it was possible that the government that they founded would become overly corrupt at some point, and its citizens should be able do as they did.

Do you trust the government?