A sergeant under San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi who oversaw the department’s shooting range was transferred after he questioned whether the sheriff could take a marksmanship test in light of his domestic violence case, The Chronicle has learned.
Mirkarimi then took the test and failed it, preventing him from carrying a gun, department employees said.
Sheriff’s Department officials strongly denied Thursday night that the sergeant had been transferred because he potentially stood in the way of Mirkarimi’s being granted permission to carry a gun. They described his transfer as a budgetary move and said Mirkarimi had nothing to do with it.
Sacramento police have confirmed that France train hero Spencer Stone was stabbed early Thursday morning.
According to the Pentagon, who has confirmed Stone was injured, Spencer is in “stable condition.â€
“A1C Spencer Stone has been transported to a local hospital, and is currently being treated for injury. The incident is currently under investigation by local law enforcement. He is currently in stable condition,†a statement from the U.S. Air Force reads.
Initial reports listed Stone’s condition as “critical.â€
Earlier this week, San Francisco’s last gun shop, Highbridge Arms, announced that it is closing its doors in October 2015. Here’s an excerpt from their Facebook page.
As Highbridge Arms was my home gun shop, I will be very sad to see it go. There is no official word if they are relocating or simply going for good. I hope they will relocate to somewhere in the Bay Area so we can ensure that San Franciscans can exercise their Second Amendment right.
It will be interesting to see if any viable lawsuits come up in the future which argue that San Francisco has a de facto gun ban since it will (soon) have zero gun shops, or something along those lines. I’m not a lawyer, but I sense potential for legal action by some organization down the line.
Every now and then a case, a law comes into focus to remind us just how far we remain from the dream of equal protection under the law. Such a case appears this week in the State of California where the betters have moved Senate Bill 707 to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk for consideration.
SB 707 is a gun control bill. It is part of a larger strategy of zero tolerance gun control measures with the real aim to trip people up in ways that even the smallest mistake causes them to lose their gun rights. SB 707 adds a new tripwire to the Gun Free Zone laws that surround 1,000 feet around every school in California threatening everyone, even those with a dire need or legal permit, from being within these zones with a gun. Everyone that is, except for the one lobby Sacramento needed to support this law, retired police officers. Even though they are no longer law enforcement officers and do not have any police powers, they will be granted a privilege no other citizen will have in the State of California. Indeed, there are lobbyists that seem to believe that retired police officers are not subject to living among their lowly fellow citizens as equals under the 14th Amendment; that they are better, exempt; that they are not “little people”.
With the Los Angeles Police Department planning to destroy 6.5 tons of ammo recovered, gun dealers are scrambling to save the more than 1,500 guns collected from a deceased California man.
Now, as police have determined they have more than 1,500 guns and nearly seven tons of munitions on hand, Braun is fielding unsolicited calls from gun dealers looking to move in on the Pacific Palisades man’s estate, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
According to the report from FOX News, two bombers flew off the coast of Alaska at 10:30am and then off the coast of Central California at 11:00am EST. The bombers are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, although NORAD did not confirm if the bombers were armed at the time of intercept. The bombers did not cross into U.S. airspace but how close they came has not been revealed. A similar incident took place on July 4th of 2013.
Considers as a banned hazardous product under the Consumer Product Safety Act: (1) any firearm receiver casting or firearm receiver blank (do-it-yourself assault weapon) that does not meet the definition of a firearm under the federal criminal code at the point of sale but that can be completed after purchase by the consumer to function as a firearm frame or receiver for a semiautomatic assault weapon or machine gun, or (2) an assault weapon parts kit or machine gun parts kit.
Makes it unlawful to market or advertise any of such weapons for sale on any medium of electronic communications, including over the Internet. Requires marketing or advertising violations to be treated as unfair or deceptive acts or practices under the Federal Trade Commission Act.
The Court’s widely-noted failure to clarify the scope of Americans’ Second Amendment rights is shocking and inexcusable. Justice Thomas ruefully observed that the Court has granted review in decisions “involving alleged violations of rights it has never previously enforced” and involving rights claims that are “expressly foreclosed by precedent.” And yet, in the Second Amendment context, the Court has refused to give law-abiding citizens seeking to exercise their rights the certain protection they deserve.
If I lived in San Francisco, I would violate that law. San Francisco’s anti-gun ideology is simply not worth risking my family’s safety. I do not have confidence that — even with practice — my wife and older children would be able to unlock a safe as quickly as necessary, under extreme stress (nor am I completely confident that I could do it). In fact, it’s hard to see a clear downside to violating the law. Yes, there are criminal penalties for noncompliance, but San Francisco isn’t doing house-to-house searches for gun safes. It simply doesn’t have the resources to systematically enforce this law, and it never had any intention of systematically enforcing the law. Instead, it’s counting on the least dangerous gun owners in America (the law-abiding cohort) to voluntarily render themselves more vulnerable. I would dissent. In fact, I have dissented in other, similar jurisdictions in years past.
By declining to hear the case the Supreme Court has essentially given the “thumbs up” to this law and signaled to other cities that they may do the same.
By declining to hear an appeal filed by gun owners and the National Rifle Association, the court left intact a March 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the measure.
The regulation, issued in 2007, states that anyone who keeps a handgun at home must either store it in a locked container or disable it with a trigger lock.
Smith & Wesson announced it will stop selling its handguns in California rather than manufacture them to comply with the new microstamping law. The other publicly traded firearms manufacturer in the U.S., Sturm, Ruger, also said this month that it will stop new sales to California.
The announcement late Wednesday came a week after the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, filed suit against California for requiring that all new semi-automatic pistols that are not already on the state’s approved gun roster have the microstamping technology.
Will the Supreme Court allow the 9th Circuit to openly flout one of its precedents? We may soon find out. Today the justices are meeting in private conference. Among the items scheduled for consideration is a petition filed by conservative lawyer Paul Clement seeking review of the 9th Circuit’s Jackson opinion. “The decision below is impossible to reconcile with this Court’s decision inHeller,” that petition observes. “The Court of Appeals’ conclusion that San Francisco may venture where this Court forbade the District of Columbia to go is so patently wrong that summary reversal would be appropriate.”
This is a slow, painstaking process, and it has fallen behind in recent years. After the Sandy Hook shooting in 2013, lawmakers gave the gun seizure program a $24 million infusion to fund more agents to knock on more doors. The goal was to investigate every one of the 20,000-some people who remained on the illegal gun owner list.
Part of the problem is that it is hard to keep up with the new people being added to the list all the time. Last year, agents conducted 7,573 investigations and seized 3,286 firearms. At the same time, 7,031 gun owners were newly flagged. The state has hired 18 additional agents to bolster its 33-person unit, and has been trying to staff up more.
California is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars and police officers’ time looking for “criminals” while real crime and police work is being avoided. Is it any wonder why people are leaving California in droves?
Lawyers for the Department of Justice submitted a memorandum Friday in the United States District Court, Southern District of California, in support of defendant’s motion to dismiss Lycurgan, Inc., dba Ares Armor vs. B. Todd Jones [successor name to be substituted], in his official capacity as Head of the San Diego Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The case involves Ares’ contention that ATF erred and overstepped its authority in declaring the firm’s EP80 polymer precursor receivers (“80 percent receiversâ€) to be complete receivers, and thus “firearms†as defined by the Gun Control Act of 1968.
Weapons retailers in California are suing the state over a ban on the display of images of handguns – even the word “handgun†– in what the business owners say is a violation of the First Amendment.
“I am one of the most heavily regulated and inspected businesses in existence, but it’s still illegal for me to show customers that I sell handguns until after they walk in the door,†said Baryla, who owns Tracy Rifle and Pistol.
“That’s about as silly a law as you could imagine, even here in California.â€