San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston is floating a law that would ban security guards at retail establishments from drawing a firearm to protect the business’ property.
What exactly are they there for?
Remember, this is a state that frantically disarms its citizenry to the point that there is little chance that an armed good guy will intervene. This puts even more importance on businesses protecting themselves and their customers with armed security.
San Francisco’s current Police Code, in force for four decades, bars an armed guard from drawing or showing “other than in a holster, any handgun except in lawful response to an actual and specific threat to person and/or property.”
As the purpose of armed security is to protect persons and property, it is a reasonable statute. However, Preston wants to remove the “property” stipulation from the code and keep weapons in their holsters.
He called it “entirely unacceptable that our local law includes drawing a weapon to respond to protecting property…We need to make sure that our local law is crystal clear that a security guard cannot draw a weapon to protect property.”
Preston added that human life is more important than property and that the city’s law needs to be amended. Later, he tweeted that “our proposal to fix San Francisco’s strange and possibly illegal law that allows a security guard to draw their gun to protect “person and/or property should not be controversial.”
A recent case in the California city turned the spotlight onto store security. An alleged shoplifter, 24-year-old Banko Brown, was fatally shot during an altercation with a drugstore security guard. Local media reported that the guard asserted that Brown repeatedly threatened to stab him when he attempted to stop the theft.
Police did not find a knife on Brown, but District Attorney Brooke Jenkins did not file charges against the guard. The probe concluded that he “acted in lawful self-defense when he fired his weapon at Brown.”
Protesters immediately demanded that Walgreens stop employing armed security guards.
San Francisco, as is well known, is plagued by policymakers who want nothing more than to disarm the public and even those hired to protect them. Misdemeanors by design go unprosecuted, felonies are downgraded, and other so-called “reforms” keep criminals on the streets while failing to protect law-abiding citizens.
The city is now experiencing a mass exodus of downtown retailers who are taking their wares elsewhere. They cite the lawless environment which is plagued by robberies, shoplifters, open-air drug markets and other glaring signs of urban decay.
Preston’s misguided proposal is just another step in a chaotic direction.
The online responses, as would be expected, were brutal.
One noted that thieves decide that their lives are less important than your property. “Why not actually prosecute thieves as a deterrent rather than try to find new laws for law-abiding citizens?”
Another person called the proposed move an “incitement to robbery.”
Others asked “what happens when they show up at his house? Hypothetically of course.”
Another astute observation called for Preston to step aside. “Glad to know you continue to place a higher value on the lives of criminals than on the employees and citizens that are being violently threatened, harassed, and attacked for simply trying to work at a low salary job or shop without threat of violence. You should resign.”
Armed security is a sign of the times, and there should be more guards present rather than less. It is foolish to strip firearms from upstanding citizens and then move to do the same to what in many cases is the only line of immediate defense.
