I found this article. I think it's a rather good read, and another example of how San Francisco is a testing ground for the future of cutural utopia.Here's a link to an aritcle that was published in the SFGuardian about the Pink Pistols.The Chronwatch saw this coming since February of 2005.Here's an article from the San Francisco Chronicle that came out earlier this week on December 5, 2005.Here's an excerpt from the article.
Another great excerpt...For a long time, Margaret Hurst lived in fear.
Gangs control turf just a few blocks from her Mission District apartment in San Francisco, and she's sure a neighbor across the street deals drugs. Her building was broken into four times in one year. She saw teenagers on her street display a gun. And while she was stopped at a red light one day, a man tried to punch in her car window in a case of road rage.
So she bought a handgun. Now Hurst is no longer scared.
"I'll tell you one thing. If I'm going down, I'm taking them with me," said 49-year-old Hurst, who is about as un-Charlton Heston as any woman with a British accent, braided bun and long flowing skirt could be.
Here's some statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Report on San Francisco"Assuming I'd be able to make a 911 call in the first place, you're looking at six or seven minutes realistically before police can get here," Hurst said. "You can get killed many times over in that length of time."
- In 1995 San Francisco had a population of 738,371. There were 99 homicides and 10,903 violent crimes.
- In 2003 San Francisco had a population of 772,065. There were 69 homicides and 5,725 violent crimes.
- From 1995 through 2003, the homicide rate decreased by 33.3% and the violent crime rate decreased by 49.8% in San Francisco.
- Although San Francisco had an unusual number of homicides, 88, in 2004, the city has averaged 71 homicides each year over the past decade. 63 of the homicides in 2004 involved a firearm.
I find the above quote from italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria very moving, and easily applicable to modern day. I also think the Pink Pistols prove by example that humans love generalize each other, even the press? It also proves democracy (granted the press doesn't completely get in the way by spinning things, and "We the people..." actually think for ourselves!!) is still alive! I don't think the National Gun Association is going to allow it to go into effect, that's the entire purpose of that entity, to uphold the 2nd ammendment.The laws that forbid the carrying of arm ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Cesare Beccaria (1764)
