BELLEVUE, WA - More than 15 huge advertisements promoting the 25th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference are up at prominent transit locations around the City of San Francisco, amounting to something of a coup for the Second Amendment Foundation.
You can see the ad that San Francisco MTA waved their anti-gun policy and allowed to run in order to avoid being sued at www.saf.org/SF-MTA_Ad.pdf.
SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, looking ahead eagerly to the Sept. 24-26 milestone conference, noted that the advertisements show a woman holding a shotgun and staring through a curtain, under the headline, "A violent criminal is breaking through your front door. Can you afford to be unarmed?" Gottlieb noted that the CalGuns Foundation assisted in the advertisement's preparation.
The silver anniversary conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport. Gun rights activists and leaders from across the nation will attend.
What is remarkable about the advertisement is that it appears the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has violated its own guidelines, which prohibit advertising that "appears to promote the use of firearms." The MTA recently caused a flap by doctoring movie posters for a Will Farrell-Mark Wahlberg movie called "The Other Guys," removing handguns from the actors' hands and replacing them with a can of mace, a badge or just bare fists.
"We take this annual conference around the country," Gottlieb said, "to areas where our rights might be threatened. We're holding it in San Francisco this year because SAF was successful in overturning the city's 2005 handgun ban. Next year, we're holding it in Chicago, where SAF's lawsuit in McDonald v. City of Chicago led to the Supreme Court's ruling in June that applies the Second Amendment to the states.
"We suspect the MTA is allowing our ads in San Francisco despite their policy because they believed we were prepared to file a lawsuit on First and Second Amendment grounds if, for any reason, the city didn't take them," Gottlieb stated. "Knowing we were responsible for the McDonald victory over Chicago and the defeat of their own 2005 gun ban proposition, and probably aware of our litigation in New York, Maryland, North Carolina, Illinois and California, they did not want to lock horns with us again."
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation's oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. SAF has previously funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles; New Haven, CT; and San Francisco on behalf of American gun owners, a lawsuit against the cities suing gun makers and an amicus brief and fund for the Emerson case holding the Second Amendment as an individual right.
