Friday, November 12, 2010

Proposition H in San Francisco (2005)

On another thread TS asked me this:

My question is to put yourself in San Francisco in 2005. Are you telling me you would have voted NO on the gun ban?
Wikipedia has the story about this fascinating situation.

To answer TS's question, I guess we first have to belabor still further the definition of "gun ban."   I wasn't following these things in 2005, but it sounds to me like this is a good example of the misuse of the word "ban."  Wouldn't "restrictions" be better, or even "severe restrictions?"

Those semantic issues aside, and assuming the brief description in Wikipedia is accurate, I would have voted YES on Proposition H in 2005.

What's that prove exactly?   Please leave a comment.

8 comments:

  1. "I wasn't following these things in 2005, but it sounds to me like this is a good example of the misuse of the word 'ban.' "

    And why is that? Because the law had the standard gun control police exemption? Because other than that handguns were banned.

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  2. Mike, thank you for answering my question. I really appreciate your honest answer. As you can tell prop H has turned into a little pet project of mine.

    MikeB: “I wasn't following these things in 2005, but it sounds to me like this is a good example of the misuse of the word "ban." “

    What is it with you and the word “ban”? This is not the gun owners crying wolf- THEY (the authors of the proposition) used the word “ban”. If you can’t use the word “ban” in this context, then I guess nothing in this country has ever been banned. Here is the text again. It is the first word in section 2- and it is referring to all firearms and ammunition:

    Section 2. Ban on Sale, Manufacture, Transfer or Distribution of Firearms in the City and County of San Francisco: Within the limits of the City and County of San Francisco, the sale, distribution, transfer and manufacture of all firearms and ammunition shall be prohibited.

    Sale, manufacture, transfer, and distribution is everything except possession. It is a grandfather clause. Section 3 goes further to ban actual possession of handguns except for LEOs, and that is only in the context of their service. LEOs are not allowed to personally own handguns, or have them at all after they retire. Check out all the police groups in opposition in your wiki link. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other gun law that banned possession of what you already own.

    In the “hear no evil” thread (aptly named since Jadegold continues to deny what happened in SF), Democommie mentioned you can procure ammunition and long guns outside of the city, which is true- but you can’t bring it home. That would be covered under the “ban of transfer of all firearms and ammunition.” This also means when you run out of ammo for your legally owned long gun, you can’t buy any new ammo to have in your home. In short, anyone who moves into the city starting in 2006, or any SF resident born after 1987 is under complete gun prohibition. No guns, no ammo.

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  3. OK, I guess you can call this a ban, especially since they did themselves. That's a good point.

    I'll reserve my use of that complaint to the real offenses.

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  4. TS:

    "Democommie mentioned you can procure ammunition and long guns outside of the city, which is true- but you can’t bring it home. That would be covered under the “ban of transfer of all firearms and ammunition.” This also means when you run out of ammo for your legally owned long gun, you can’t buy any new ammo to have in your home."

    Um, no. It appears to mean that. At least it appears to mean that to you. "Ban of transfer" CAN or MIGHT mean that you cannot, legally obtain ammuninition for legally owned firearms or, for that matter, legally own firearms--or it might not. The "possession and use" clause is used for a number of objects and substances (burglarious tools, drugs and alcohol--to name two).

    You seem exceedingly sure of yourself, please do me a favor and get an actual SF legal department attorney to say, definitively, what that clause actually says. Or, maybe you could just admit that a "ban on all guns" is what you would like it to say so that it will fit your notion of the ongoing assault on the poor, bleagured gun owners.

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  5. Give it a rest Demo, even MikeB admits that in this case a ban was actually a ban.

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  6. If we ban Democommie, Mikeb302000, or Jadegold from being allowed to enter or stay in the United States; guess it really isn't a ban because other people can enter the country, eh?

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  7. Democommie: “You seem exceedingly sure of yourself, please do me a favor and get an actual SF legal department attorney to say, definitively, what that clause actually says.”

    I was here in 2005. I heard the local lawyer talk.

    Democommie: “Or, maybe you could just admit that a "ban on all guns" is what you would like it to say so that it will fit your notion of the ongoing assault on the poor, bleagured gun owners.”

    I don’t need it to be a ban on all guns for it to be an “assault on gun owners”. Even if it didn’t have the “transfer” clause, this is a ban on possession of handguns without a grandfather clause. You said yourself this was a stupid idea, so why act like you are defending it? And we poor beleaguered gun owners were convinced 15 years ago when handgun registration was made mandatory that this would never happen- and now they know who has them. “No body is going to take away your guns…”

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  8. "Ban" is still one of the most overused words on the gun blogs. "Draconian" too.

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