http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/08/BAFT1FARV3.DTL&tsp=1

S.F.'s lone gun store can reopen for business

Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, September 8, 2010


(09-08) 17:19 PDT SAN FRANCISCO –– San Francisco's only gun store can resume selling firearms as early as November after the Police Department approved a conditional permit Wednesday, first requiring the store to beef up security measures before it reopens.

Sgt. William Coggan, who presided over the three-member panel that approved the retail permit, said opponents of High Bridge Arms on Mission Street near Valencia Street had failed to offer evidence backing their assertion that the store brought crime to the neighborhood.

"High Bridge appears to be a reasonably well-run business," Coggan said of the shop, which opened in the late 1950s. "And even with all the restrictions and limits San Francisco puts on the store, High Bridge has the legal right to sell guns."

Steven Alcairo, manager of High Bridge Arms, said the store's owners would happily meet the department's request for increased video surveillance and waist-high barriers outside the shop to thwart any would-be thief who might try crashing a car through the front window.

"It's a fair request," Alcairo said. "It's about following the letter of the law, and that's what we do."

The store's owners had closed High Bridge Arms in January and hoped to convert the space to offices, but the city denied them a permit. When they sought to reopen the gun store, neighborhood groups objected.

To opponents, Wednesday's ruling was undesirable but the conditions made it bearable.

"I feel like it was a victory," said Jaime Ross, treasurer of North West Bernal Alliance. "I feel like they wouldn't have included as much as they did if we didn't raise our concerns."

The store will also be required to keep display windows free of advertising, giving it an open-air look.

"It won't look like such a foreboding place anymore," Ross said. "It will open it up to the street."

Coggan said he had received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls in the days leading to the hearing. The overwhelming majority opposed the gun store, he said.

Yet at the hearing, only four people spoke against High Bridge Arms, while 10 spoke in support.

John Felix Arnold III, 30, has lived above the store for two years. He said he's lived in New York and elsewhere in San Francisco, but that his current place is the safest he's ever had.

"There's always a police presence," he said. "It's a place that's known not to mess around."

Others worried that High Bridge Arms' potentially explosive inventory was a risk to all neighbors.

Jose Muniz, a 35-year resident of Bernal Heights, asked the department to require the store's employees to keep ammunition in a fire-safe storage area.

"Gun shops do not belong where people live," Muniz said.

As part of the permit's conditions, Coggan said, High Bridge Arms will be required to lock all guns inside an industrial safe at the end of each shift, and no one under age 18 will be allowed inside the store without a guardian or parent.

"I appreciate all the security," Ross said, "but what we're trying to do is make the street a friendly place to be."

Email Justin Berton at [email protected]

They should sell whistles...could be a big seller in that city...whistles

I think we should place explosives on the fault line, and send commifornia out to sea. And before all you californians start bitching and crying, I was born and raised there. i lived there almost 20 years before i got out in the early 90's. You should move, california is fucked and the mexicans are taking it back anyways. They are upset about losing it.

As a condition of reopening the gun store, anyone who lives in the neighborhood who wasn't there before it opened in the 50's should be forced to move.

 

Is San Fran on the correct side (the west side) of the fault line?

For you, I have fixed this post.

Holy shit! Talk about a monopoly!

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I stopped reading after "San Francisco".

 

Bet noone in that neighborhood would bat an eye if a sex toy shop opened up with merchandise visible to everyone walking by

If I'm buying a gun in the Bay area, I'm going to Oakland.

Yeah when I think of san francisco I keep thinking dildo shops everwhere.  Never been there, never going.

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I couldn't be surrounded by that many fucktards, my head would explode

Despite the stupidity the mere fact that there is an open and operating gun store among those liberal scumbags kind of makes me smile...The pucker factor among the San Fran denizens just went up a notch, and that's a miracle in and of itself in that town
 

Mine, too.

The Socialist Paradise has a "gun store"?!?!

ick

I think they would rather see something else being sold, that can be blown on.

All they sell are S&W Ladysmiths.

You've got that backwards. What you really mean is that if you're going to Oakland, you're going to buy a gun.........first.

A street corner vendor, selling cock meat sandwiches, wouldn't have to deal with the same BS.

Just imagine the Marine recruiting office that opened in Berkely.

 

That city does blow pretty hard, doesn't it? Whistles. Yep. Whistles.

San Francisco Sucks  

I'll put in $100

Shocking. A well run gun shop in one of the worst gun owning states in the country not being linked to causing crime?

Mentioned whistles because gay people tend to carry a whistle as part of their self defense and because San Fran is known for having a fairly sized population of gay people.

Fuck that whole city.

The fuck are you smiling at? Are you the mayor of san francisco now? Is that where the wall of dicks is located?

The store is allowed to reopen, does that make you upset?

 

well right fucking on for High Bridge Arms!!!   I got family that still lives in the City and will go by there next time and buy something.  Last time I bought the last 4 boxes of 00 and that was it.  let me tell you about where the store is.  it's on Mission St. in the heart of the Mission District - Latin town.  they have a small little dinky storefront you wouldn't even see if you walked past it.  because all the other latin stores and restaurants and "clubs" would command your attention with their SALE SALE SALE storefronts.  High Bridge was virtually invisible.  maybe you'd spot the Glock sticker on the window but probably not.

SF - there used to be 3 or 4 gun shops.  the biggest was The San Francisco Gun Exchange and it was bad ass.  Nice clean place on 2nd & Mission close to the financial district.  Lots and lots of everything for us!  Don't remember when they closed down but I got my first gun there.  

"it's a fair request."

WTF?

Even worse, define reasonable.  Hell, look at who is defining it in this case.



 

LoL LOT's and LOT's of whistles!

Lot 1  (lt)
In the Bible, Abraham's nephew, whose wife was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back as they fled Sodom.