NRA files suit against San Francisco
The memory of a mass shooting that killed three at the Gilroy Garlic Festival was still fresh in nearby San Francisco when its Board of Supervisors unanimously voted last week to denounce the National Rifle Association. But the city’s leaders took their message a step further, declaring on Sept. 3 that the NRA is a “domestic terrorist organization” and discouraging the city from working with contractors or vendors with ties to the gunrights lobby.
Now the NRA is hitting back with a lawsuit that calls the resolution “obviously unconstitutional,” arguing that targeting gun-friendly vendors and contractors violates their right to free speech.
“This lawsuit comes with a message to those who attack the NRA: we will never stop fighting for our law-abiding members and their constitutional freedoms,” NRA CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said in a statement shared with the Washington Post.
The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office responded by suggesting the NRA focus on reducing gun violence.
“The American people would be better served if the NRA stopped trying to get weapons of war into our communities and instead actually did something about gun safety,” John Coté, a spokesman for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, told the Associated Press. “Commonsense safety measures like universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and restricting high-capacity magazines would be a good start.”
The legal battle comes as legislators nationwide grapple with how to address gun violence after a summer marked by mass shootings in California, Texas and Ohio. It also comes at a time of turmoil for the NRA, which has lost a president, its top lobbyist, and several board members amid financial woes, and as public opinion swings in favor of stricter gun laws.
San Francisco passed the resolution after a gunman killed a 6-year-old, 13-year-old and 25-year-old in Gilroy, about 80 miles south of the city, on July 29. Supervisor Catherine Stefani, who wrote the resolution, told the Washington Post she believes the NRA deserves to be known as a “terrorist organization.”
“They should reasonably know by now that they are fueling the hate fire in this country,” she said after the resolution passed. “People are dying, and they continue to stand in the way of reform.”
In the resolution, the board of supervisors also urged the city to review its relationship with companies that work with the NRA and refrain from establishing new partnerships with any business that supports the gun lobby.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the NRA acknowledges that the “terrorist” label is little more than a “frivolous insult.” Instead, the suit primarily takes issue with the Board of Supervisors attempts to bar the city from working with NRA-connected vendors and contractors.
“San Francisco’s actions pose a nonfrivolous constitutional threat,” the lawsuit argues. “Defendants are intent on targeting the NRA for its advocacy, chilling the NRA’s and its members’ rights of free speech and association under the First Amendment, all with an eye to silence the NRA from the debate. on Second Amendment rights.”