San Francisco's Mayor Newsom Decides To Punish Illegal Acts By Criminalizing Legal Acts

The August 9, 2007 San Francisco Examiner reports:

SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - A city hit hard by gun violence should not have gun sales at its back door, said Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is expected to announce today that The City is seeking state legislation to end gun shows at the Cow Palace.
While the exhibition hall is technically located in Daly City, it is just blocks away from San Francisco’s Sunnydale Housing Project, one of many neighborhoods in The City plagued by gun violence.
Although the gun shows are legal, Newsom said numerous illegal gun transactions occur in the parking lot during the show, which will take place Saturday and Sunday. Another gun show is scheduled in November.
“It needs to be shut down, and we’re going to do our best to do that,” Newsom said.

Let me get this straight: what's happening in the Cow Palace is legal--background checks are being run, people who can't legally buy guns are prevented from buying them. What is happening in the parking lot is illegal--people are buying and selling guns without background checks, waiting periods, etc. So the city needs to shut down the lawful activity?

I'm sure that Mayor Newsom thinks that if the gun shows didn't happen at the Cow Palace, there would be no illegal gun sales going on in the Cow Palace parking lot. He's probably right. But they would certainly be taking place elsewhere in San Francisco. So which is it easier for the police to do? Look for unlawful transfers in one relatively small place (the Cow Palace parking lot), or the entire city of San Francisco?

My recollection of the Cow Palace parking lot suggests that a few police officers on top of the surrounding buildings with spotting scopes could see situations that undercover officers could rapidly respond to, and catch unlawful transfers as they take place, or shortly after they have taken place. Video footage through zoom lens in combination with actually catching people in possession of firearms would be sufficient to get convictions, and because this is all in a public place, there's no basis for claiming that the criminals were having their rights to privacy violated, or that there was a requirement for a search warrant. If you can see some sort of covert or semicovert transaction taking place in the parking lot, this would seem like probable cuse to search the participants for the items that were exchanged.

The gun shows at the Cow Palace are making it easier for the police to enforce the existing law, by bringing criminals together into the parking lot. A sensible elected official (unlike Mayor Newsom) would regard this as a benefit of the gun show, not a problem. But this is really more about appearing tough on guns rather than about doing something about San Francisco's violent crime problem.