By Katy Grimes

Touting “community values” and the need to reduce crime, Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, wants the Crossroads of the West gun show tossed out of the Cow Palace in South San Francisco.

But a closer look at the issues suggests that Leno’s “values” might not reflect the larger community and shows little substance to the claim that crime is linked to the gun show. Instead, the real goal appears to be to give Leno and other San Francisco Democrats a chance to demonstrate their hatred for gun rights by running one of the last remaining legal gun venues out of town.

Leno’s SB 475 would ban the gun show. If the measure passed and Gov. Jerry Brown were willing to sign it, the Legislature would be able to intervene because the Cow Palace is owned by the state and managed by the Department of Food and Agriculture’s Division of Fairs and Expositions.

Such a ban would be against the state’s financial interests. According to the Department of Finance, the Crossroads of the West gun show brings in $150,000 to $180,000 in rent every year for the Cow Palace, in addition to the state and local tax revenue the event generates.

Leno’s claims undercut — and mocked — in testimony

On Wednesday, SB 475 was heard by the Assembly Appropriations Committee in an often-testy hearing. Leno once again declared that the community surrounding the Cow Palace in South San Francisco does not want the gun shows. Here is the succinct version of his argument from his website:

“For years, residents, community organizations and elected leaders from the neighborhoods surrounding Cow Palace have asked to have a voice in the decision to hold gun shows in their backyards, but they have been ignored. Meanwhile, firearms related crimes persist in these communities, tearing apart the lives of innocent families who reside in the surrounding area. We must give local communities a say in determining whether they want gun shows in their neighborhoods, especially when they live in daily fear of gun violence.”

The Cow Palace is located in Bayview-Hunters Point, which has been overrun with gangs and drugs since the 1970s, and has a high rate of murder, violent crime and poverty. Though it has only a small fraction of San Francisco’s entire population, the area has 40 percent of San Francisco’s homicides, according to Leno.

Yet as testimony showed, the high murder rate has never been tied to gun sales at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show. In fact, there have been no reported incidents involving gun violence at the gun show.

And the idea that the Cow Palace’s booking decisions should reflect “community values” triggered joking and barbs at the hearing, given that Leno is mum about the annual Erotic Exotic Ball and the Cannabis Festival, also held annually at the venue.

Ban would create huge headaches for gun owners

John Lovell, representing the California Police Chiefs Association, said banning the Crossroads of the West gun show from the Cow Palace would send anyone wanting to buy or sell a gun to “Nevada,” since there’s nowhere else in San Francisco left to make a gun transfer.

Lovell said California has the strictest and safest gun-show laws in the country. “The Cow Palace gun show has as much to do with gun violence as the Exotic Erotic Ball has to do with marriage infidelity,” Lovell said.

“You want to limit choices to consumers,” said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, to Leno. Donnelly pointed out people pay to get into the gun show at the Cow Palace and wait in line for two hours.

“Obviously there is a demand for this,” Donnelly said. “No one is holding a gun to their heads to go to the gun show.”

“You want it in your front yard? I’ll support that,” Leno retorted. “The community doesn’t want it. I represent the values of the neighborhood.”

“How do you know the community doesn’t want it, with a two-hour line?” Donnelly asked.

Leno said the parents of a nearby middle school signed a petition.

“The police chiefs pointed out the Erotic Exotic Ball,” Donnelly said, noting the irony of Leno worrying about the interests of a nearby school only when guns were involved.

“Neighbors care so much about this,” Leno added. “They just don’t want it in their front yard.”

But Leno never made a connection between the gun show and violent crime in the area.

An ongoing crusade by anti-gun San Francisco pols

Leno’s crusade is nothing new. For a decade, Leno has wanted to boot the gun show out of the Cow Palace, including twice before offering bills to that end that failed to win passage. The measures were identical to legislation by former state Sen. Jackie Speier, a Democratic lawmaker from Hillsborough. Speier’s bill was introduced in 2004 but failed to get through the Assembly.

Speier, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and then-District Attorney Kamala Harris were all supportive of banning the gun show from the Cow Palace. “Gun shows at the Cow Palace threaten our most vulnerable residents,” Newsom said in 2007, Inside Bay Area reported.

If that were the case, then there would have been crime victims coming forward to back Leno’s legislation and testifying at the hearing. There were not.

Leno’s anti-gun show rhetoric may be in keeping with his anti-gun ideology, but it isn’t backed up by reality.

By Katy Grimes

What do leisure suits and gun shows have in common? More than you might think. It turns out that some members of the California Senate don’t particularly like either. But I’ll bet in this Legislature, gun shows are despised more.

But this is about constitutional rights, and not the right to wear ugly, pastel, stinky polyester clothing with the knees permanently stretched out.

At issue is whether the California Legislature can dictate who rents the Cow Palace. After taking a vote Thursday on SB 475 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, the majority of senators think they should be able to decide.

Leno said the community surrounding the Cow Palace in South San Francisco does not want gun shows at the entertainment and exposition center. According to Leno, local residents have taken the issue up with San Mateo and San Francisco counties. But the Cow Palace is owned by the State of California, leaving the counties without final jurisdiction over the facility.

“This is about community values,” Leno said.

Senators have once again trampled on the Constitution.

There was one exception to the Democratic majority in support of Leno’s bill. “I hope we don’t begin to say ‘what I do and don’t like’ simply because we don’t like someone’s activity,” said Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood. “I don’t like guys who wear leisure suits, so they should be banned from renting the Cow Palace?”

“There is no evidence that people who left the gun show shot up San Francisco or committed crimes,” Wright added.

But Leno said with a middle school nearby, the Cow Palace gun show is causing the neighborhood undo trauma. “Many of the students at the middle school are dealing with post traumatic stress disorder,” Leno said. “That’s how violent the neighborhood is.”

What Leno did not say is the area surrounding the Cow Palace has a history of year round violence, which has nothing to do with the four gun shows a year.

“Their condition is exacerbated because of the gun shows,” Leno added. “It’s about community values.”

Community values probably have very little to do with Leno’s bill, and more to do with gun control activists inappropriately and cruelly using a violent neighborhood as a convenient prop. And Leno did not tell his Senate colleagues that  the Cow Palace is the same facility that hosts an annual marijuana users 420 Celebration,  and the Erotic Exotic Ball, dubbed “the wildest party on earth.”

Crossroads of the West Gun Shows take place four times a year inside the Cow Palace. Sen Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, said there are no records or reports of guns sold at the show ever used in a crime.

This isn’t about community values, it’s about activist hysteria and hype.

A recent story in the San Jose Mercury News explained more. “But critics say it is offensive to hold the Bay Area’s most prominent gun show in the vicinity of poor and working-class neighborhoods, including Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco, that are plagued by gun violence. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said Friday there have been 75 gun-related crimes in the past six months within 2 miles of the Cow Palace.”

The rest of the story

Since the 1970’s Bayview-Hunters Point, also the location of a decommissioned naval shipyard, has been overrun with gangs, drugs, high murder rate, violent crime, discrimination, police harassment, and poverty. The area has one of the highest crime rates in all of San Francisco, despite having only a small fraction of San Francisco’s entire population. Some reports have found nearly 30 percent of San Francisco’s homicides occur in this area.

Is this because of the Crossroads of the West gun show, held at the Cow Palace four times each year?

Instead of blaming a constitutionally protected right with which they don’t agree, Leno, along with the area’s other state and U.S. elected representatives, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, also Democrats, may want to ask why these residents have been forced to live under such violent, abysmal conditions for so many years.

TIP to Leno: It’s not about the Cow Palace gun show, or the people who frequent it.

SB 475 was passed almost entirely along party lines, 25-13. Sen. Wright was the only Democrat to vote against it.