SAN FRANCISCO LABELS NRA A “DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION”

Joseph Klein
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274859/san-francisco-labels-nra-domestic-terrorist-joseph-klein
September 6, 2019



Catherine Stefani during a board meeting in June.(Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle)

San Francisco, the once-great city by the bay, has become an insane asylum run by its inmates. In July, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors decided that the words “convicted felons,” “criminal,” “offender,” “addict,” “prisoner,” and “juvenile delinquent” are unacceptably offensive terms that need to be replaced. The Board believed that such words “obstruct and separate people from society and make the institutionalization of racism and supremacy appear normal.” In San Francisco doublespeak, a “convicted felon” is now a “justice-involved person.” A “criminal” is now “a returning resident.” A “juvenile delinquent” is now transformed into an innocent-sounding “young person with justice system involvement.”

Obscuring the identity of real criminals with sugarcoated euphemisms is San Francisco’s new “normal.”  Now San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has added to its record of insanity by deciding unanimously this week to pass a resolution accusing the National Rifle Association (NRA) of being a "domestic terrorist organization." In the topsy-turvy world inhabited by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, the NRA is committing a terrorist act by virtue of exercising its First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and to petition the government in defense of the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” The resolution denounces what it calls the NRA’s use of its “considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence." It recklessly charges, without citing a shred of evidence, that the “National Rifle Association through its advocacy has armed those individuals who would and have committed acts of terrorism.”

The resolution may technically be a non-binding declaration spouting nonsense, but it represents the proverbial foot in the door to further mischief. Most notably, after maliciously slandering the NRA as a “domestic terrorist organization,” the Board of Supervisors’ resolution urges an economic boycott by San Francisco against firms who dare to do business with the NRA. The resolution states that “the City and County of San Francisco should take every reasonable step to limit those entities who do business with the City and County of San Francisco from doing business with this domestic terrorist organization.” In effect, the Board of Supervisors is using economic threats to terrorize commercial firms into having to choose between doing business with the city and county of San Francisco or with an organization of approximately 5.5 million members advocating to protect its members’ right to defend themselves against criminals – or, as the Board of Supervisors calls them, “returning residents.”

Catherine Stefani, the supervisor of the city's District 2 who wrote the NRA resolution, declared, "The NRA has it coming to them, and I will do everything that I possibly can to call them out on what they are, which is a domestic terrorist organization." 

Ms. Stefani should instead call herself and the rest of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors out for the lax law enforcement, generous give-away programs, and sanctuary city policies protecting illegal alien criminals that have contributed to San Francisco’s crime rate and rampant homeless crisis. “People don’t feel safe walking down the street,” said Joel Engardio, vice president of Stop Crime SF, last month, who noted the inexcusable pre-trial release of violent criminals and the failure to prosecute “too many repeat offenders.”  San Francisco also has the highest rate of property crime in the nation among large US cities, according to the FBI. None of these problems are the fault of the NRA or of law-abiding gun owners. They are the fault of progressives who believe that criminals are simply “returning residents,” illegal alien criminals should be protected from deportation, and homelessness is the fault of the rich rather than of incompetent government policies that tolerate encampments, feces, garbage and drug paraphernalia on the streets.

Ironically, the one positive trend in crime that the San Francisco Bay area has experienced in recent years is the sharp drop in the gun homicide rate. Nevertheless, in its infinite stupidity, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has decided to target the NRA as its primary bogeyman.

This is not the NRA’s first encounter with San Francisco’s anti-Second Amendment “values.” Back in 2005, San Francisco voters approved Proposition H, a local ordinance which was intended to restrict the possession of handguns and ban the manufacture, distribution, sale and transfer of firearms and ammunition within the city limits. Proposition H was challenged in court by the NRA and other gun rights advocates who prevailed. The city ended up paying a settlement in the amount of $380,000 to the NRA and other plaintiffs to cover their litigation costs. Since this case, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment protected weapons “in common use by law-abiding citizens.” The Court explicitly referred to the individual’s right to armed self-defense. Advocating to protect that right, as the NRA does, is to help law-abiding Americans defend themselves against the violent acts of real terrorists.

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.