San Francisco Gun, Ammunition Control and Totalitarian State

A couple of gun control proposals in the ultra-liberal city of San Francisco will surely receive legal challenges if attempted to be put into law.

Current law requires that all vendors who sell ammunition to people within city limits — even vendors outside San Francisco — keep records of sales, but it doesn’t require the seller to report anyone. One proposed law would force sellers, wherever they are, to contact the chief of police within 24 hours when anyone in San Francisco buys more than 500 total rounds in a single transaction.

 

I asked Police Chief Greg Suhr what he planned to do with such information, and he said, “It would let us know who was buying ammunition in ‘quantity’ so we could follow up with, ‘What’s up with buying so much ammunition?’-type questions.”

That last comment by the Police Chief is about as dumb and controlling as you can get. It's okay to buy, say, 400 rounds, but 500 rounds will somehow make it more likely someone is going to kill someone?

To me, this is nothing more than an attempt to strip even more rights from people and give extreme power to law enforcement. Power that could be easily abused.

That's not even the worse though. Listen to the next proposal if you want to see the attempt to become even more of a totalitarian state.

The other proposed law would make it a crime to possess Winchester Black Talon ammunition and bullets that are similar to the Black Talon. In his letter endorsing the law, Suhr pointed out that on “July 1, 1993, Gian Luigi [Ferri] used a TEC-9 loaded with a mix of standard and Black Talon ammunition to carry out a deadly assault at 101 California Street in San Francisco, leaving eight people dead and six wounded.”

The law also would add any ammunition “designated by its manufacturer for sale to law enforcement or military agencies only” to the list of bullets you can’t possess.

In case you don’t know which bullets are similar to the Black Talon or which ones are designated for police and military, the Police Department is supposed to set up a public list so you can be sure your ammunition stash won’t land you in jail for six months or get you slapped with a $1,000 fine.

But here’s the kicker: If something is not on the Police Department’s public list, it doesn’t mean you’re safe. The law specifically allows for criminal prosecution of people who possess banned bullets even if the ammo is not on the list.

It’s that last part — where the law expects purchasers to know bullet designations and similarities to Black Talons because the police list could be incomplete or nonexistent — that will probably cause this law to be challenged in court. It’s unconstitutional to criminalize behavior that is not clearly defined. 

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