Bob Barr

Aw, Shoot…Brazil Wiser than San Fran
November 16, 2005

Jurisdiction No. 1: High rate of violent crime; a widely publicized anti-gun measure on the ballot; voters decisively reject a measure to ban the sale of firearms and ammunition.

Jurisdiction No. 2: High rate of violent crime; a widely publicized anti-gun measure on the ballot; voters decisively adopt a measure to ban sales of firearms and ammunition.

Two jurisdictions. Two gun-ban measures. Two very different results. The first - in which the ban was rejected - took place in Brazil, a country with the world's highest incidence of firearms fatalities, and which does not have a provision in its constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to keep and bear arms. The second vote took place in a country with a much lower rate of firearms crime than Brazil, but in which its citizens do have a provision in their Constitution guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms; it took place in the United States - the city of San Francisco, to be precise.

Despite massive publicity by the anti-gun campaign prior to Brazil's nationwide vote in late October, voters, while obviously depressed by the frighteningly high murder rates, determined that with police corruption and ineptitude accounting for much of the firearms crime rate, it would be foolhardy to strip law-abiding citizens of the ability to defend themselves. Brazil's president, himself mired in a corruption scandal, had openly endorsed the ban. Still, in a country in which voting is mandatory, nearly two-thirds of those who voted on the measure rejected it. Anti-firearms groups from Europe and elsewhere that had invested heavily in an effort to pass the measure were crushed.

The fact that anti-firearms groups were surprised at the results of the vote in Brazil indicates how out of touch they are. Trying to take guns away from people who are victimized by roaming gangs of armed hoodlums, and who feel - with a high degree of justification - that the law-enforcement establishment is so corrupt and inept that it contributes largely to the problem, makes about as much sense as urging people facing a massive flood that their best course of action is to throw away the oars to their rowboats.

Common sense prevailed in Brazil. San Francisco is another story.

While San Francisco does not suffer from Brazil's staggering rate of violent crime (it's not even close), city leaders in the city that once urged inhabitants to "wear some flowers in your hair" have been dealing with a rising rate of violent crime. The city announced a year ago that it would place a measure on the ballot this November to ban the possession of all handguns in the city and halt the sale of all firearms and ammunition. Those San Franciscans who happened to have relied on the Second Amendment's guarantee that a U.S. citizen's right to own a firearm "shall not be infringed" would be forced to surrender all previously owned handguns.

Such a draconian anti-gun measure prevails in only two other American cities - neither of which, of course, is known for safe streets: Washington and Chicago. Yet, San Francisco residents, long known for maintaining their position on the cutting edge of liberal social experimentation, opted to disarm themselves - or at least 58 percent of those who voted did so. Interestingly, and unlike a similar measure the city passed a generation ago in 1982, the measure on the ballot this year exempted visitors to the city from having to surrender their guns at the city gate.

The 1982 measure was quickly challenged in the California courts and found to be invalid as an effort by a city to usurp state authority.

Opponents of this year's Proposition H have already filed a court challenge to San Francisco's latest bone-headed decision. Even the city's mayor, Gavin Newsome, who a year ago championed same-sex marriage in San Francisco even though state law prohibited it, expressed doubt that the anti-gun measure would withstand legal challenge. He's probably right. Once again, the City by the Bay is blowing hot air.

San Francisco ought to instead adopt the common-sense notion - apparently understood by two-thirds of the voters in the fifth most populous country in the world - that you don't go into a gunfight armed with nothing but flowers and good intentions.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr is a frequent commentator on political and social issues and the chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation's 21st Century Center for Privacy and Freedom