san francisco – Page 19

Strict SF Gun Laws Survive Challenge in Courts

June 12, 2015 By James Poulos 7 Comments

Continuing its reticence to reach beyond a landmark decision seven years ago, the Supreme Court handed a victory to tight regulations on gun use in San Francisco.

Twin ordinances

“The court on Monday let stand court rulings in favor of a city measure that requires handgun owners to secure weapons in their homes by storing them in a locker, keeping them on their bodies or applying trigger locks,” the Associated Press reported. “A second ordinance bans the sale of ammunition that expands on impact, has ‘no sporting purpose’ and is commonly referred to as hollow-point bullets.” The first ordinance passed in 2007; the second, in 1994.

The NRA and gun rights advocates had expected that the court’s 2008 decision in the District of Columbia v. Heller gave them a strong chance at overcoming the regulations. “Gun owners challenged both ordinances after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Constitution guarantees the right to possess guns at home for self-defense, then ruled in 2010 that state and local laws that substantially burdened that right were invalid,” observed the San Francisco Chronicle. “Gun groups are also relying on those rulings to challenge California’s licensing requirements for concealed weapons, and ordinances in San Francisco and Sunnyvale that ban the possession of high-capacity gun magazines.”

Failure on appeal

As Bloomberg reported, plaintiffs were convinced “that the San Francisco law was similar to the Washington, D.C., trigger-lock requirement invalidated in the high court’s 2008 decision.” But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal ruled against them, teeing up a showdown at the Supreme Court. “The Ninth Circuit Court held that the city had a legitimate purpose in applying laws that reduce the danger of guns,” Al Jazeera America recounted, “and that while it did burden the rights of gun owners, it didn’t burden them so much they couldn’t exercise the rights to self-defense enshrined in the Second Amendment.”

“‘The record contains ample evidence that storing handguns in a locked container reduces the risk of both accidental and intentional handgun-related deaths, including suicide,’ Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta wrote in the court’s opinion in March of last year.”

Among Supreme Court Justices, however, only Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas signaled their willingness to take the case.

“In a six-page dissent, Thomas, joined by Scalia wrote that the San Francisco gun laws are ‘in serious tension with Heller‘ and that the prior court rulings had ‘failed to protect’ the Second Amendment,” National Public Radio noted. “San Francisco’s law allows residents to use their handguns for the purpose of self-defense, but it prohibits them from keeping those handguns operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense when not carried on the person,” according to Justice Thomas.

Mixed messages

Although some legal experts immediately noted that the court’s decision raised questions about just how much protection the Second Amendment now could afford, others noted the court’s recent decision to side with the NRA in a different case.

Just last month, the court drew acclaim from the NRA for its unanimous ruling that convicted felons could sell firearms confiscated by law enforcement.

“The decision came in response to a case involving former U.S. Border Patrol agent Tony Henderson,” Western Journalism reported, “whose 19 guns were confiscated by the FBI upon his arrest on drug charges.”

“Following his guilty plea, Henderson was a felon prohibited from possessing firearms; however, he did not want to simply lose the roughly $3,500 his gun collection was worth. He petitioned a lower court in an effort to allow a third party to take possession of the guns and attempt to sell them on his behalf. That effort was unsuccessful at every stage of appeal up to the Supreme Court level.”

Originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Constitution, Gun, san francisco, SCOTUS, Second Amendment, Supreme Court

Oakland minimum wage hike burdens businesses, hurts employees

April 10, 2015 By Michael Saltsman 3 Comments

Oakland’s minimum wage rose by 36 percent to $12.25 less than a month ago, but the city’s neighbors to the north in Emeryville are already trying to follow suit. This week, the City Council settled on a plan to increase the minimum wage by 36 percent for smaller businesses, and by 60 percent for larger businesses.

Before acting on this plan, the council would be wise to take a closer look at what’s happening in the city it’s trying to emulate.

Oakland’s minimum wage increase was approved by voters in November, following a campaign by proponents in a labor union-backed coalition called Lift Up Oakland. Their argument, which can still be viewed at LiftUpOakland.org, was that increased labor costs would be good for business — indeed, that smaller businesses would even “appreciate” the new mandate.

A team of researchers at the University of California-Berkeley, including a former living-wage organizer from San Francisco, reached a similar conclusion: The costs of the mandate would be negligible, and the benefits would be substantial.

However, a series of news articles published in the weeks since the minimum wage took effect — in publications such as the East Bay Express and the San Francisco Chronicle — suggest that costs of the new minimum wage are real. Restaurants have reported raising prices by as much as 20 percent, hoping customers won’t be turned off. The Chronicle interviewed a member of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, who noted that (predictably) some businesses have closed up shop for good.

To expand on these anecdotes, we worked with a survey research firm and contacted 223 mostly-small businesses in the city between March 23^rd and March 25^th, all of whom were affected by the wage increase to $12.25. What we found in these conversations was a sentiment far different than appreciation.

Of the businesses surveyed, 56 percent reported a large increase in labor costs. One in five of those businesses who were able to estimate the size of the cost increase pegged it at greater than 20 percent.

Customers might expect price increases following a minimum wage increase, and indeed, 47 percent of surveyed businesses reported raising prices. But the law didn’t just cost customers — it cost employees, too. For instance, 30 percent of the surveyed businesses either reduced their employees’ hours or their hours of operation. Seventeen percent — or about one in six — laid off employees or otherwise reduced staffing levels. Perhaps most concerning, 27 percent of surveyed businesses reported that they were “somewhat” or “very” likely to close their doors altogether.

In follow-up conversations after the survey was complete, we spoke with some of these “likely” businesses. One husband-and-wife team, who’ve owned a sewing business in Oakland since 1990, cut their staff from 5-6 additional employees down to 1-2 additional employees. One of the business owners said they’re going to try this overworked arrangement for 6-12 months — and close down if it isn’t feasible.

At a seafood restaurant in Oakland that’s been open less than a year, a similar dynamic applies. The owner, who used to operate with three additional employees, has cut two people from his staff since March 1^st just to make ends meet. His wife sometimes comes in to help with the restaurant. Like the husband-and-wife sewing team, he said it’s possible he’ll close if he can’t make the low-staffing model work.

Child-care providers have also been pinched. The Chronicle reported the Salvation Army’s childcare service was “scrambling” to fill a $146,000 hole that the minimum wage increase ripped in its budget. One small provider I spoke with, Muriel Sterling, has had to make cutbacks for the first time in her business’s existence: Employees are working fewer hours, and she’s posted a sign warning of higher childcare rates to come — which typically means a loss of business.

Members of the Lift Up Oakland coalition have shown a surprising lack of empathy for the damage they’ve wrought. When asked about the deleterious impact on childcare services, for instance, a spokeswoman said they “did not specifically analyze impacts on all industries.” Oops.

She offered that the childcare cuts might not matter, because employees’ higher pay might create a beneficial situation where “less child care is needed in the first place.” This response highlights perfectly the economic illiteracy that underpins these campaigns. Instead of destroying job opportunities for the many in order to give higher pay to a few, we should create more pathways for all to a better-paying future.

It may be too late for Oakland to learn this lesson — but Emeryville still has a chance.

Michael Saltsman is research director at the Employment Policies Institute

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Employment Policies Institute, Michael Saltsman, Minimum Wage, oakland, san francisco

Water guzzlers would be punished under state proposal

April 8, 2015 By Kurtis Alexander 1 Comment

As reported by the SF Chronicle:

California officials seeking to cut urban water use by 25 percent amid the punishing drought said Tuesday that the best way to get the job done is to spread the hurt unevenly, slapping the biggest guzzling communities with mandatory cuts up to 35 percent.

This means leafy towns on the Peninsula and a handful of faraway suburbs, where tall trees hover and big lawns rule, would have to make the Bay Area’s largest concessions. The plan is to go easier on places like San Francisco that already consume relatively little water on a per capita basis.

While warm Southern California enclaves such as Palm Springs and Beverly Hills, alongside Central Valley cities like Bakersfield, dominate the state’s list of heavy water users, Northern California spots such as Hillsborough, Atherton, Portola Valley, Woodside and Menlo Park also rank high in per capita water use. Consequently, they would be targeted for the strictest cuts on the state’s proposed 10- to 35-percent sliding scale of reductions.

Click here to read the full article

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Beverly Hills, Drought, Mandates, Palm Springs, regulation, san francisco, Water

Politics Behind 16-Year-Old Voter and Mandatory Vote Proposals

March 27, 2015 By Joel Fox Leave a Comment

In San Francisco, Supervisor John Avalos proposes that 16-year-olds should vote. In Cleveland last week, President Barack Obama suggested mandatory voting was a transformative idea worth considering. One can’t help but sense political agendas at work.

Despite Supervisor Avalos’ argument that 16-year-olds are old enough to drive and pay taxes, the real question is do they have enough experience and understanding of the world and government to vote? A question for the president, should we mandate that people vote who pay no attention to public affairs and have no desire to vote?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders unsettled Avalos when she asked him if 16-year-olds are mature enough to be allowed buy cigarettes and alcohol. If they have the reasoning and ability to make good decisions, then why not? Avalos objected. The key sentence in Saunders’ column:“To say that someone should have the right to vote, Avalos assured me, “It’svery different from saying someone is adult.”” (Italics by Saunders.)

The columnist also pointed out that if the issue was that a 16-year-old could vote because he or she is affected by city services, then Saunders herself, as someone who works in the city and is affected by those services should vote although she does not live in the city.

Similarly, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan questioned the wisdom of mandatory voting. Calling the mandatory vote idea “the worst and most mischievous political idea of the year” Noonan wrote, “Making those who don’t care about voting vote will only dilute the votes of those who are serious and have done their democratic homework.”

Saunders charged that the 16-year-old vote proposal was designed to allow “the left wing of the city’s left wing is to retain their ebbing power in City Hall.” Clearly, supporters of the idea believe 16 and 17 year olds will vote to support their agendas. These youngsters will still be in school under the tutelage of influential instructors and living at home where surveys show a great majority of youngsters follow parents thinking on public affairs and are yet to become independent thinkers.

I’m sure the president is aware of that old saying attributed to Winston Churchill, “If you are young and not liberal, then you have no heart; but if you are old and not conservative, then you have no brain.” Whatever the truth in that sentiment, conventional wisdom is that the young support the liberal position and statistics show for the most part, the young rarely vote. Mandate that they vote, suggests the president. Is it possible that the conventional wisdom occurred to supporters of the mandatory vote idea?

While we should want all to study public affairs and to vote when they are legally qualified to do so, the proposals here are motivated not so much as changes to enhance better government as they are to gain a political advantage.

Originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

Joel Fox is Editor of Fox & Hounds and President of the Small Business Action Committee

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Debra Saunders, Joel Fox, John Avalos, Peggy Noonan, san francisco, Vote

San Fran Wants to Lower Voting Age to 16

March 22, 2015 By John Seiler 8 Comments

With shades of the 1960s Youth Movement, San Francisco might drop its voting age to 16 from 18. Doing so only would affect city elections, as other elections are affected by state and federal voting laws. Yet Fog City often has been a harbinger of national trends.

The reform is the idea of Supervisor John Avalos. He said, “I have seen the power of young people to be able to make changes and positive contributions to their community, and it makes sense to give them the right to vote.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Avalos and other supporters say it will encourage civic engagement among youths and instill in them lifelong voting habits at a time when turnout is low.” In addition, “Sixteen-year-olds can drive, work, pay taxes and be sentenced to life in prison.”

On March 16, two youngsters from the San Francisco Youth Commission led chants before City Hall on reducing the voting age. Said one of them, Joshua Cardenas, an 18-year-old senior at Archbishop Riordan High School, “You can drive, you can work, you can pay taxes and you can be tried in adult court, and yet you are denied the right to vote. There is a contradiction there. Certainly, they have the knowledge and competence to vote at 16.”

Opposition

“It’s a terrible idea,” John J. Pitney Jr. told the Chronicle; he’s a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. “Sixteen-year-olds have a lot going for them, but civic judgment isn’t one of those things.”

“There isn’t a single age at which an adolescent becomes like an adult for purposes of thinking through things. It really depends on the issue and domain,” said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University.

Conservatives also point out that people ages 16-17 commonly hold more liberal views than the general electorate.

Moreover, one survey indicated that, until they go to college, kids’ political views closely mirror those of their parents. According to a study by the National Social Sciences Association, 96 percent of high-school students’ political views “matched their parent/guardians’ political views. … Although teachers long for students to develop political beliefs based on research, this study concludes that most will follow in their parents/guardians’ foot steps.”

The implication is that, if the voting age were dropped, the voting clout most increased would be that of parents of the new voters; while everyone else’s clout would be reduced slightly.

1960s agitation

The 1960s arguments for dropping the voting age to 18 from 21 largely concerned the draft and the Vietnam War. The age of most draftees was 19. And large numbers of the 550,000 troops in in Vietnam at the height of the war were under 21.

As longtime Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said in 1970 in hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments:

“The well-known proposition — ‘old enough to fight, old enough to vote’ — deserves special mention. To me, this part of the argument for granting the vote to 18-year-olds has great appeal. At the very least, the opportunity to vote should be granted in recognition of the risks an 18 year-old is obliged to assume when he is sent off to fight and perhaps die for his country. About 30 percent of our forces in Vietnam are under 21. Over 19,000, or almost half, of those who have died in action there were under 21. Can we really maintain that these young men did not deserve the right to vote?”

In the San Francisco situation, such an argument would not be too strong. Although America is engaged in wars in Iraq and elsewhere, there is no draft and one isn’t likely anytime soon, although there is draft registration for young men (not young women). And although the military accepts 17-year-olds with parental consent, the long months of training in the modern military mean almost no one will be 18 before going into a war or potential war.

Education

There were other reasons for lowering the voting age to 18, which was accomplished in 1971 by the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Among other things, Kennedy said:

“Our young people today are far better equipped — intellectually, physically and emotionally — to make the type of choices involved in voting than were past generations of youth. … Because of the enormous impact of modern communications, especially television, our youth are extremely well informed on all the crucial issues of our time, foreign and domestic, national and local, urban and rural.

“Today’s 18-year-olds, for example, have unparalleled opportunities for education at the high school level.”

Some of those arguments might be pertinent today to further reducing the voting age to 16, including the spread of the Internet and social media.

On the other hand, California’s schools, which led the nation during the so-called “Golden Age” of 1960s education, since havefallen near the bottom on national tests.

‘Wild in the Streets’

As it usually does, San Francisco will sort things out on its own.

But the debate has an amusing element because of a classic cult movie made during the debate over the voting age, 1968’s “Wild in the Streets.” A youth movement is led by a Jim Morrison imitator named Max Frost, 24. His hit song, “Fourteen or Fight,” demands dropping the voting age to 14.

In a compromise with a senator played by Hal Holbrook, the age is dropped to 15. The youth the elect Max president.

Look for a young Richard Pryor as Stanley X, the drummer in Max’s group.

It’s a parody. But sometimes parodies become reality.

This piece was originally published on CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Government, san francisco, Voting

Drought Resulting in Water Rate Hikes Across CA

March 16, 2015 By James Poulos 10 Comments

Faced with a drought that won’t quit, officials have taken new steps to add to Californians’ discomfort — a fresh round of rate hikes. Regulators in the San Francisco Bay Area have begun the march toward charging significantly more for water, pleading that limited rainfall this spring has left them with no choice.

As CBS San Francisco observed, the plans taking shape within three of the state’s largest water agencies reflect a cost crunch impacting the Santa Clara Valley Water District and the San Francisco and East Bay Municipal Utilities District.

The agencies have found themselves between a rock and a hard place this year, reluctant to put the squeeze on already restive residents, but strapped with mounting costs set to increase even further.

As Beau Goldie, CEO of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, bluntly told the San Jose Mercury News, “We don’t want to raise water rates.” But Goldie and other district chiefs have targeted hikes of 30 percent or more because water conservation has slashed sales. As the Mercury News reported:

“Because they have sold less water, the agencies have lost tens millions of dollars in revenues. They also have had to spend more money on drought-related expenses such as buying extra water from outside the Bay Area to help meet demand, expanding public relations budgets to ask the public to use less water amid shortages, and offering rebates to homeowners who replace lawns with drought-tolerant plants or old, leaky appliances with water-efficient ones.”

Groundwater bank

Santa Clara Valley has been reduced to shelling out millions of dollars to pump in water from a so-called “groundwater bank” located in Kern County. EBMUD, falling back on the same strategy, has put its hopes in using its share of limited drought relief funds to bankroll imports of its own, spokeswoman Abby Figueroa told KTVU Fox Channel 2 News. “We will have to continue asking our customers to cut back their usage,” she added. “How much is still being determined.”

According to KTVU, EBMUD saw customers conserve last year at a rate 13 percent higher than two years ago. But this year, residents seemed close to maxing out their ability to cut back. So far, the savings rate has dropped to just 4 percent.

Still, the size of the dropoff had EMMUD contemplating an increase in its current voluntary conservation rate to 15 percent, ABC 7 reported. Voluntary conservation could even be replaced with mandatory conservation.

Spreading confusion

At the same time as the utilities have sorted through unattractive options, water management outside the San Francisco Bay has also been hit with confusion and frustration. Because of the complexity created by the Golden State’s separate state and federal water programs, Kern County will receive more water than communities and farms on the Eastern and Western sides of the San Joaquin Valley.

As the Fresno Bee reported, while the State Water Project has supplied Kern, the federal government’s Central Valley Project has kept water flowing to those in the East and West of the Valley — that is, when there is water.

Though similar in size and infrastructure, the federal and state projects’ differences have created “a complex and uncomfortable flashpoint in the Valley,” according to the Bee. It added:

“For one thing, the smaller state project has a somewhat lighter burden, because it does not have to provide more than 300,000 acre-feet of water for wildlife refuges as the CVP does.

“The subtle difference is a big deal in a drought, when there is so little water to go around. Other below-the-radar differences, such as water-delivery pecking order dating to the 1800s, are magnified in a drought. Those with historic rights get their water first.”

With challenges radiating outward from San Francisco Bay into the Central Valley, utilities chiefs along the Central Coast and in Southern California soon could have reason to fret.

Originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Bay Area, Central Valley, Drought, san francisco, Water

UC Berkeley Slammed Over Allegedly Biased Minimum Wage Report

February 23, 2015 By Connor D. Wolf 3 Comments

A top researcher has called out University of California, Berkeley for allegedly releasing a biased research paper that served as leverage for the San Francisco minimum wage increase.

Economic expert Michael Saltsman, research director at the Employment Policies Institute, argues that a biased research paper by UC Berkeley helped lead residents of San Francisco to support a rapid minimum wage increase, which possibly contributed to several businesses closing. As Saltsman argues, the wage increase makes the cost of operations a much worse burden for business owners. They often have to cut hours or even in some instances completely close their business.

The paper, “San Francisco’s Proposed City Minimum Wage Law: A Prospective Impact Study,” was released in August, and argued that an increase of the minimum wage will have a vastly positive impact for workers in the city.

“Drawing on a variety of government data sources, we estimate that 140,000 workers would benefit from the proposed minimum wage law, with the average worker earning an additional $2,800 a year (once the law is fully implemented),” the study noted. “Our analysis of the existing economic research literature suggests that businesses will adjust to modest increases in operating costs mainly through reduced employee turnover costs, improved work performance, and a small, one-time increase in restaurant prices.”

The following November, residents of the city voted to increase the minimum wage gradually to $15 an hour over the course of three years. Saltsman argued the UC Berkeley study used biased findings.

“These are the comforting studies they can turn to,” Saltsman told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “It creates stories that say you can raise the minimum wage without consequences.”

“If you look at the methodology,” Saltsman said. “Basically they didn’t take into account the fact it could have a negative impact on employment.”

Saltsman argued that the study only looked at how the wage increase will benefit workers, as opposed to how it may negatively impact businesses. If a business owner is unable to hire as many employees or has to close their business because of the higher cost of operations, it becomes bad for workers, too.

“These contribute to the public policy debate,” Saltsman continued. “It’s become a key position in the public policy debate.”

Saltsman said their approach and the results of the study are not at all surprising. Some of the researchers involved had activist backgrounds.

“The problem at UC Berkeley is they are presenting themselves as unbiased economists,” Saltsman notes. “This is the sort of thing you expect from an advocacy group.”

Michael Reich, one of the researchers involved in the report, shot back at the claims the study was biased.

“In restaurants and retail, stores both open and close all the time. You’d need to know whether closings increased and openings decreased relative to a control group,” Reich told TheDCNF. “That’s an objective method that all economists, including me, use to identify the causal effects of a policy.”

Though the wage increase has not gone into full effect yet, opponents are already pointing to several businesses that have closed. These include Borderlands bookstore, Abbot’s Cellar, Luna Park and Source.

Follow Connor on Twitter

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Berkeley, Daily Caller, Michael Saltsman, Minimum Wage, san francisco, University of California

Sen. Leno’s “Income Inequality” Lost Cause

February 20, 2015 By Michael Saltsman 3 Comments

California’s minimum wage is set to rise to $10 an hour on January 1^st of next year. But for Senator Mark Leno (D-San

CA State Senator Mark Leno, D-San Francisco

Francisco), this already-dramatic wage hike isn’t nearly dramatic enough.

Citing an “income inequality crisis,” Sen. Leno has called for a minimum wage increase to $11 an hour in 2016, followed by another jump to $13 an hour in 2017. Unfortunately for the senator, the evidence suggests a hike in the base wage will do very little to solve this crisis — and might even make it worse.

San Francisco, which Sen. Leno represents, has one of the highest minimum wages in the country — and one of the country’s most dramatic gaps between the rich and the poor. (One analysis last year compared the city’s inequality level to that in a developing nation.) City voters in November resolved to fix this problem by approving a proposal to raise the city’s minimum wage even higher, to $15 an hour, by 2018.

Thus far, the looming $15 minimum wage only seems to be worsening the city’s inequality crisis. Several small business owners have been forced to close their doors as a consequence of the coming cost hike, hindering their own entrepreneurial dreams and those of the people they employed. This trade-off isn’t unique to San Francisco. If you’re an employee working at a business with small profit margins, your employer will be faced with one of two difficult choices when the minimum wage goes up: Either raise prices, or cut labor costs by reducing staffing levels or employees’ hours.

If the wage goes up and the terms of your employment don’t change, you may be better off; if you lose job and your co-workers do, too, then you’re most certainly worse off. That means Sen. Leno’s plan for a statewide $13 minimum wage will create winners and losers in the entry-level workforce. Unfortunately, a team of economists writing in the Journal of Human Resources discovered that the “losers” from a wage hike — employees who are pulled below the poverty line, or at least closer to it, as a consequence — outnumber the “winners.”

Put differently: Instead of redistributing income from the top 1 percent, Sen. Leno may unintentionally redistribute it among the bottom.

The Senator’s office has pointed skeptics to comforting studies from a team of ideological researchers at the University of California-Berkeley, suggesting that the negative impact of a higher minimum wage in California—both on the city level, and statewide–would be minimal or nonexistent. But the Berkeley team’s estimates are looking less and less credible in the face of real-world evidence.

In San Francisco, for instance, one bookstore reported that the $15 minimum wage would cause a fatal 18 percent increase in operating costs—90 times greater than what UC Berkeley projected for city retailers. And in Oakland, where the minimum wage is rising to $12.25, restaurants are reporting price hikes of up to 20 percent—far greater than the 2.5 percent that the Berkeley team predicted.

These real-world examples are no doubt unsatisfying to the most dedicated ideologues, and it’s unsurprising that one of the Berkeley researchers insinuated employers might not be telling the truth. But spin like this only goes so far, especially in the face of real flesh-and-blood employees who no longer have jobs.

If Sen. Leno is serious about reducing income inequality and increasing opportunity, he owes it to the California residents who need those opportunities to examine the best way to help them. That starts by acknowledging that we should judge public policy by its outcomes rather than its intentions.

Michael Saltsman is research director at the Employment Policies Institute

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: CA Senate, Legislature, Mark Leno, Minimum Wage, san francisco

SF Gun Case May Be Heading For Supreme Court

January 29, 2015 By John Hrabe 1 Comment

More than a dozen Second Amendment groups are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a high-profile challenge to a San Francisco gun-control measure.

Led by the Firearms Policy Coalition, gun groups say the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals erred in its decision to uphold San Francisco’s safe-storage law.

Under the ordinance implemented in 2007, the city “requires all residents who keep handguns in their homes for self-defense to stow them away in a lock box or disable them with a trigger lock whenever they are not physically carrying them on their persons.”

The groups referenced the 2007 case before the U.S. Supreme Court, District of Columbia vs. Heller, which upheld an individual right to “keep and bear arms” in the Second Amendment.

“The court should grant certiorari to reaffirm key principles concerning the scope and substance of the Second Amendment,” the groups wrote in their amicus brief. “Many lower courts have taken great pains to avoid the consequences of these decisions — defying a fundamental constitutional limitation this court made explicit in Heller. … At the forefront of this resistance is the lower courts’ refusal to follow this court’s command, made in Heller and reiterated in McDonald, that Second Amendment claims are not to be judged by unrestrained judicial interest balancing.”

Gun groups point to Heller decision

Last March, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the local restrictions on gun ownership, finding that gun storage mandates save lives.

“The record contains ample evidence that storing handguns in a locked container reduces the risk of both accidental and intentional handgun-related deaths, including suicide,” Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote in the ruling for the panel. She added that gun safes “may be readily accessed in case of an emergency.”

Second Amendment groups have focused their arguments on the legal precedents, arguing that San Francisco’s regulations contradict the Heller decision, as well as McDonald vs. Chicago in 2009, which held the Second Amendment also applied to state laws.

“The Ninth Circuit’s lamentable decision in Jackson shows why it is the most overturned circuit court in the nation,” said Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs, one of the state’s leading gun rights activists. “The Supreme Court should take up this case not only to correct a clear wrong, but to stem the tide of judicial resistance in recognizing the right to keep and bear arms as fundamental Constitutional rights.”

He added, “The Second Amendment doesn’t protect second-class rights, and it’s time for courts to take the enumerated right to keep and bear arms at least as seriously as they do unenumerated rights like abortion.”

Other gun groups that have joined the Firearms Policy Coalition in filing the friend-of-the-court brief include the Second Amendment Foundation, the Calguns Foundation, Firearms Policy Foundation and California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees.

San Francisco City Attorney has “faith in the judiciary”

Six San Francisco residents, with the help of the National Rifle Association and the San Francisco Veteran Police Officers Association, first challenged the safe storage law in 2009. The case underscores the lengthy process of seeing gun-control restrictions ultimately become established law. Long after the press conferences and publicity stunts, government attorneys struggle to defend the restrictions.

“I have complete faith in the judiciary to affirm our position that San Francisco’s gun safety laws protect the public in a manner that’s both reasonable and constitutional,” San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a 2013 press release on the case. “San Francisco has been a top target of the NRA for many years, and I’m proud of the efforts we’ve made to aggressively battle these legal challenges, and protect sensible gun laws that can save lives.”

As CalWatchdog.com has previously noted, the nation’s leading Second Amendment advocacy groups have begun to shift their efforts from the California Legislature to the courthouse. Since 2009, The Calguns Foundation has found great success in its legal challenges, which have targeted the implementation of concealed weapon permits and mandatory waiting periods.

A copy of the brief in the case of Espanola Jackson, et al. vs. City and County of San Francisco, et al., can be viewed at the Firearms Policy Coalition’s website.

Originally published at CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: 2nd Amendment, gun control, guns, san francisco, Second Amendment, Supreme Court