If you want to buy a gun in San Francisco, time is up. Or rather, if you want to buy one legally. The very last gun shop in the city is closing its doors, the AP reports.
The only gun store in San Francisco is shuttering for good, saying it can no longer operate in the city’s political climate of increased gun control regulations and vocal opposition to its business.
“It’s with tremendous sadness and regret that I have to announce we are closing our shop,” High Bridge Arms manager Steve Alcairo announced in a Facebook post on Sept. 11. “It has been a long and difficult ride, but a great pleasure to be your last San Francisco gun shop.”
Alcairo said the breaking point came this summer when a local politician proposed a law that would require High Bridge Arms to video record every gun sale and submit a weekly report of ammunition sales to the police. If passed, the law would join several local gun control ordinances on the books in a city still scarred by the 1993 murder of eight in a downtown high-rise and the 1978 assassination of Mayor George Moscone and gay rights activist Harvey Milk.
“I’m not doing that to our customers. Enough is enough,” Alcairo said. “Buying a gun is a constitutionally protected right. Our customers shouldn’t be treated like they’re doing something wrong.”
That’s right, driven out by government intrusion.
For years, the High Bridge Arms weathered mounting restrictions imposed by local lawmakers and voters, who passed a handgun ban in 2005 that a judge later struck down. The gun store increasingly stood out in the gentrifying Bernal Heights neighborhood of hot restaurants, trendy bars and a chic marijuana dispensary, while weathering organized campaigns calling for its closure.
High Bridge will close Oct. 31, Alcairo said.
The closing was not totally unexpected, though. PJ Media’s Rod Kackley wrote about the very store just last month.
The restrictions and intrusions asked of the store would have been preposterous, and no reasonable customer would subject themselves to it, which is, no doubt, precisely the idea.
This is that other form of government control that we’ve seen applied to so many things, such as soda, fast food, salt, and even the coal industry. Government simply makes the environment so hostile and toxic that it impossible to do business.
And that is who suffers, after all: a small business. Not to mention residents who wish to legally purchase a gun for home protection, a hobby, or just because they damn well have a right to do so.
Keep your eyes out for more of the same. And remember the advice we wrote about here at The Right Scoop yesterday.