Lawless San Francisco Government

Residents of public housing projects in San Francisco are now receiving this new set of rules for tenants. Among the really idiotic provisions is section 1.9 of the rules:

Firearms, Knives & Weapons -- Residents and their guests may not possess or store a firearm, BB gun, air gun, paintball gun, pellet gun or any other item that discharges ammunition, bullets, etc. Water guns are prohibited. Anything that looks like a gun or a weapon is prohibited. Use of any item as an imitation weapon is strictly prohibited. Use of any item including but not limited to knives, blades, swords, pipes, bats, sticks, batons, chains, tools, rocks and guns as a weapon or the threat of a weapon is strictly prohibited. Violation of this lease provision is grounds for immediate eviction.

This means that if you legally have a gun for self-defense, you must now move out. If this were private housing, I wouldn't be happy about it, but I would at least acknowledge the right of the landlord to indulge his delusory theories of how to make the society safer. This, however, is public housing. The government is subject to a considerably stricter set of standards--including California Government Code sec. 53071 and 53071.5:

• 53071. It is the intention of the Legislature to occupy the whole field of regulation of the registration or licensing of commercially manufactured firearms as encompassed by the provisions of the Penal Code, and such provisions shall be exclusive of all local regulations, relating to registration or licensing of commercially manufactured firearms, by any political subdivision as defined in Section 1721 of the Labor Code.
• 53071.5 By the enforcement of this section, the Legislature occupies the whole field of regulation of the manufacture, sale, or possession of imitation firearms, as defined in Section 12250 of the Penal Code, and that section shall preempt and be exclusive of all regulations relating to the manufacture, sale, or possession of imitation firearms, including regulations governing the manufacture, sale, or possession of BB devices and air rifles described in subdivision (g) of Section 12001 of the Penal Code.

Clear enough? About the only part of section 1.9 that is legally enforceable is the ban on water pistols. Even the ban on using anything as a weapon, because it fails to exclude self-defense, is arguably defective, since the California Constitution, Art. I, sec. 1, includes a guarantee of a right to defend life and liberty:

All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.

You are probably asking yourself, "Water pistols? How many murders does San Francisco have with water pistols?" If California still allowed the sale of realistic water pistols, I might see their point. Back in the late 1980s, after several incidents where police officers fired on kids playing with overly realistic toy guns or pellet guns, the legislature changed the law to require them to orange or green--just to make sure that a cop wouldn't make a tragic mistake. I remember being in a park in San Jose when a big 11 year old walked in carrying what, from a distance, seemed to be a MAC-10.

So why ban water pistols, if it isn't legal to sell realistic toy guns? I suspect that this is an attempt to create a culture in which little boys don't play with toy guns. This is doomed to failure. We had some friends in California who, like my wife and I, didn't want their kids playing with toy guns. There is an age where kids aren't clear on reality vs. play, and it seemed foolish to encourage this confusion. So inevitably, they found one of their little boys had grabbed a Barbie, bent the legs over to form the grip of the handgun, while the upper body became the barrel. "Bang, bang, bang!"

I remember that the Clinton Administration tried to ban guns in Chicago public housing projects in the 1990s. My memories aren't perfect, but I think I recall that being the Clinton Administration, they decided, "Why violate only one provision of the Bill of Rights, when you can violate two?" I think a federal judge finally intervened and prevented them from doing door to door searches for guns. Can anyone point me to details of whatever federal court decision stopped this insanity?

Now, I can understand how, if you were really delusional about how guns cause crime, you might decide that banning guns in public housing would make things better--you know, like banning guns on airliners. But there's a difference: there are metal detectors at the airport, and it isn't terribly easy to get a weapon onboard (unless you are a terrorist, of course). Public housing projects don't have checkpoints and searches going in and out. That still wouldn't work very well, but at least they would be attempting to disarm everyone going into the projects. A rule like this doesn't even attempt to disarm the bad guys. The only people that are going to obey this rule are the victims of the bad guys.

UPDATE: I can't find the case myself, but apparently, Pratt v. Chicago Housing Authority, 848 F. Supp. 792 (1994) ruled against the Clinton Administration's attempts to do warrantless searches for guns--and the response was to create the lease requirement that San Francisco is now using.