As night follows day, so does a lawsuit from the NRA follow any regulation of guns at any level of government.  And so, the City of San Francisco finds itself defending Proposition H, the ban on handgun sales and ownership within city limits.  I’m not going to bother quoting any of the article here, as it’s fairly predictable; this diary is more in the way of a confession. 

I’m a bad liberal on gun issues.  I was among the 42% of the city residents who voted against Proposition H, mostly for the following reasons:

1.  It won’t do any good to ban handguns within city limits.  San Francisco is about 7 miles on a side, and you can be in rural counties in an hour’s drive.  If one is serious about handgun control, one has to deal with it not just statewide, but nationwide, and that simply will not happen, given the power of the gun lobby in most of the rural states that control national policy.

2.  Given that it won’t do any good to ban handguns within city limits, why, for the love of Pete, is the City of San Francisco poking the NRA?  Why did the City feel compelled to create yet another talking point for Republicans in the middle of the country?  And why are they spending my tax dollars on this fight?

Honestly, the gun regulation battle is pretty much over in this country for a generation at least.  I’m not saying states and municipalities shouldn’t pass reasonable regulations, but symbolic moves like Proposition H aren’t helping anyone.