Michelle Malkin has a post up about the San Francisco handgun ban.
I’ll cite the same section from the AP story as she did.
‘The gun ban prohibits the manufacture and sale of all firearms and ammunition in the city, and makes it illegal for residents to keep handguns in their homes or businesses.
Only two other major U.S. cities — Washington and Chicago — have implemented such sweeping handgun bans.
With all precincts reporting early Wednesday, 58 percent of voters backed the proposed gun ban while 42 percent opposed it.”
To begin with this wasn’t overwhelmingly supported, 58% is not what I would call a clear mandate. It has yet to be tested in court so it may not stand and more importantly this assumes that people abide by it.
The police are not going to conduct random searches of homes so the only way that someone is going to get caught is if they use it to defend themselves, if someone turns them in or if there is some type of accident.
There are a lot of possibilities here. Think about it.
The right to bear arms was originally put in place so we’d be able to populate our militia when necessary, to protect the country/gov’t/etc. Individuals don’t need guns for that purpose now, but it does seem that people should have the right to protect their home and families. And, yes, I agree, no one needs an assault rifle for protection.
Hi JG,
I never bought into the “only the bad guys have guns argument” but I am not going to get into that one.
What I really don’t understand is why someone needs an automatic or assault rifle.
Beyond that I don’t think that this is a smart idea, but those Bay area folks have their own ideas.
Michael,
The question is what you define as self-defense. If the gun is for protecting your family and home I can buy into that, but if you think that it is important because the gov’t might one day need to be overthrown I don’t buy that argument .
You are right: There are lots of possibilities, all of them bad.
Mere ownership of anything cannot practically or morally be banned.
And in crime-ridden cities such as San Francisco, denying the right to self-defense is a heinous crime, one typical of governments in such places as Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Red China … and apartheid South Africa.
Hmmm… I’m not sure how I feel about this. Personally, I don’t own a gun and never plan to. However, I am comfortable around guns (having grown up down south) and I’m not a bad shot with a pistol if I do say so myself. On the one hand, I think banning guns completely is a great idea. On the other hand, I realize that means that only the bad guys will HAVE guns. What happens when they break into your home? And until the 2nd Amendment is repealed and replaced, don’t people have the right to bear arms to protect their families and their property?