Super Daly

Uber Alles! 

By Jason Walters

Of all the strange and pathetic beings to inhabit our shared cultural landscape perhaps none is more bemusing than the local politician with delusions of grandeur. You know the type. The sort of man who looks out over a dingy twenty-block ward of benighted urban abyss, pats himself on the back, and declares, “Ah, it’s good to be the king! Look upon my works and tremble, citizens of the East Hell district of Thugsville!” A man whose dreams are as large as his soul is small. A particularly fascinating specimen of this species is our very own Supervisor Chris Daly, a man who…. well, man is a strong term. Boss Hog from the Dukes of Hazard was a man. He was Capo di tutti capi in Hazard County, which was run like his private kingdom with Rosco P. Coltrane and Cletus as his personal enforcers. The Duke boys might have gotten the better of him during the day, but Daisy Duke actually worked for him at night. In hot pants no less. Compared to a real penny-ante power broker, Chris Daly comes off more like an emaciated eunuch with Boss Hog envy. Yet Supervisor Daly has apparently decided that in addition to his lofty position as lord supervisor of San Francisco’s District Six (Inner Mission, SOMA, Tenderloin, and Cruising-For-Homeless-Children areas) that he is also a constitutional scholar. According to Daly, San Francisco’s city government has the right to usurp your constitutional right to own a firearm.

Now, Chris will undoubtedly insist that our Founding Fathers’ (Or is that Framers? I get confused what with Benjamin Franklin being a chick and everything) easy-to- understand document says no such thing. Or he’ll babble incoherently about something called “social justice” until you get bored and wander off. (Marxists always do that when you catch them lying). But, frankly, so what? I know several seemingly intelligent guys who insist that Martians assassinated JFK. That may make them overqualified to occupy elected positions in San Francisco’s city government, but it doesn’t mean that there actually was a little green man crouching in the grassy knoll. It means that they're delusional; albeit a little less so than Supervisor Daly. At least that’s what the United States Department of Justice's Office of Legal Council wrote in an exhaustive 93-page memorandum opinion made public on December 17, 2004. "We conclude that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to keep and bear arms," it states very clearly. "The Second Amendment secures a personal right of individuals, not a collective right that may be invoked by a state or quasi-collective right restricted to those persons who serve in organized militia units." The memorandum concludes that "individuals may bring claims or raise challenges based on a violation of their rights under the Second Amendment just as they do to vindicate individual rights secured by other provisions of the Bill of Rights." This Federal document bluntly acknowledges that:

A) The right to keep and bear arms is an individual one.

B) The “to keep” means to personally own and to have at one’s residence.

C) That “to bear” means to carry, and that bearing arms is not exclusive to the military context.

D) That the right is not conditioned upon actual military/militia/state guard service.

Simply put, the Feds have clearly indicated that Daly's attempt to criminalize your ownership of firearms (for the children, of course) is constitutionally no different than his attempting to deprive you of your freedom of political speech, prevent you from practicing your religion, or deny you your right to trial. Chris knows this, of course, but doesn't much care because his proposed gun ban isn't actually about guns. It's about getting his mug on the Chronicle's front page, being interviewed by National Public Radio, and improving his prospects when he eventually runs for the California State Assembly. In fact, Supervisor Daly’s proposed law is one of the most cynical examples of gross political grandstanding seen in our city for some time. Despite multiple sound bites to the contrary, Daly doesn't care very much about guns, murders, suicides, "the children," gang violence, pregnant Latinas, or even the effectiveness of the largely unenforceable ban that he is proposing. It certainly isn’t going to cut down on crime. Indeed, violent crime is almost guaranteed to go up as burglars, muggers, and rapists slowly discover that their intended prey has been rendered increasingly helpless by his proposed law. Several notable urban garden spots have tried this bold and "progressive" approach before with less than stunning results. London has the highest per capita rate of home invasion in the civilized world. That benighted hell hole we quaintly refer to as "Chicago" has bravely assumed the lofty title of murder, rape, and burglary capital of America for decades (but at least it's, uh, gun free). A similar ban which has been in effect in Washington, D.C. for some 20 years has been such a miserable failure on all of these fronts that there is now a strong bipartisan effort in Congress to repeal it entirely. So, while hypothetically admirable on some levels, Daly's profound desire to elevate our humble burg to the level of Word Class Cesspool by entering us in the Socialist Death Race 2006 is a civic accolade San Francisco could probably do without. Not that Supervisor Daly particularly cares what you think, you gun-happy-child-hating-fascist. Not when the name recognition that's going to be produced by this little controversy will help to keep the political donations rolling into his meager campaign coffers for years to come. Having witnessed Mayor Gavin Newsom’s efforts on behalf of the city’s gay community, Supervisor Daly’s wants his very own “progressive” issue with which to make himself a national figure. The important difference is, of course, that Mayor Newsom sought to increase the rights of his constituents while Supervisor Daly seeks to decrease them. Perhaps Supervisor Daly doesn’t understand the crucial differences between progressive and oppressive, but it's far, far more likely that he simply doesn’t care.

Throwing another wrench into the works is the fact that the State of California legally reserves the exclusive right to gun control within its boundaries. Its laws prohibit individual municipalities from passing regulations that contradict the state's existing ones. Under those same state laws, firearms that a citizen in Modesto can own must be identical to the ones that a citizen in San Francisco can own. Once this precedent is legally broken, however, it cannot be quickly or easily fixed. Remember, what's legally possible for San Francisco is also possible for Bakersfield or Bishop or Barstow. Gun control laws aren't exactly popular out there in the red counties where people fly the American flag on their lawns rather than burning them during "puke-inns" on Market Street. Most of the state’s cities and counties will move quickly to repeal California’s gun control laws, not add to them, should Daly's law be put into place and this precedent is set. I imagine that, in a fascinating burst of hypocrisy, San Francisco’s city government will then be held responsible for eroding gun control in California by many of the same people who are currently applauding the Supervisor’s proposal. For this reason (as well as several others including breach of contracts with gun manufacturers) the state government is going to have no choice but to fight this proposed ban as hard as it can. Not that it matters because -- let’s be honest, people -- most of us aren't in the habit of following California's firearms laws, let alone San Francisco's. Only an idiot would bother to pay attention to the half-cocked (is that expression illegal yet, Daly? It's a gun term youknow) notions spewed out by the flashback-prone, baby boomer, bike-path liberal control freaks that run San Francisco. But Chris has "one-upped" most of his competitors in the Leftist Police State Olympics. He's going to prohibit you from owning firearms in your own home, too. Which is only fair, as it's going to be illegal to defend yourself, your spouse, your children, or your neighbors from violent predators in the zippedy-do-da urban utopia that Supervisor Daly alone lives in. Last time I checked the SFPD solved about 35% of its crimes, so don't hold out any hope that they're going to come to your rescue if you get in any trouble.

Of course Daly will insist that the point of his law is to make the City safer, especially in largely minority-inhabited areas hardest hit by violent crime. But his authoritarian methods betray his true nature as yet another one of the new white upper-class busybodies that have infested poor old San Francisco in recent years, like sewer rats eating their way through an unrestored Victorian home. By demanding that law-abiding citizens "voluntarily" disarm by giving up their lawfully purchased property or face a lengthy stay in the Glamour Slammer at 850 Bryant Street, Daly has shown himself to be yet another police-state, control-freak "liberal" that poor Americans have learned to distrust and despise. It's doubtful that most people in Hunter's Point are going to be particularly persuaded by his so-called arguments. It's not exactly a secret that gun control doesn't work in the real world; just ask any London police officer. Only a yuppie politician with a low opinion of the intellectual capacities of minority voters would assume that they don't already know this. Indeed, most Black and Hispanic voters have already discovered that the primary result of (and the primary reason for) most California gun control laws is to put young Black and Mexican men in prison for longer periods of time. Richer, paler citizens don't end up going to jail for breaking gun control laws, or at least not for very long. So no matter how many empty odes to "diversity" Chris mouths, no matter how many times he cries out for "social justice" (whatever that is), and no matter how often he claims to stand up for the "little guy" against monied interests, he's just another self-serving public servant who is willing to throw San Francisco's poorest citizens to the wolves so long as it keeps his SOMA loft-dwelling, cappuccino-swilling, private-security-guard-employing, Berkeley-educated constituents feeling snugly about themselves while they cruise Polk Street for teenage transgender sex-slaves. Those of them that aren't already voting from the grave, that is.###