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Private investigator Andrew Solow is waiting on a permit for which he applied seven months ago. AMY OSBORNE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
SAN FRANCISCO—A San Francisco electrician hides his gun case in a backpack and his ammunition in a toolbox when he loads up his van for a day at the shooting range some 20 miles outside the city.
Though he shares many of the liberal values of his neighbors—“I am an equality-loving pronoun-checking, hippie, San Francisco guy”—he conceals his status as a gun owner, worried that they would ostracize him if they knew.
The 42-year-old is one of 285 residents seeking a permit to carry concealed weapons in public in a city that has long had some of the tightest firearm restrictions in the country.
The San Franciscans who want to carry guns include software engineers, accountants, middle managers and firearms instructors. They fall along the entire political spectrum, but many have at least one thing in common: They don’t want to be identified because they are worried about judgment from their neighbors or employers.
Private investigator Andrew Solow displays his guns.PHOTO: AMY OSBORNE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Their names are discoverable under public records law with some exceptions, according to legal experts.
Cities such as San Francisco that routinely denied such permits have received a flood of applications since the Supreme Court ruled for the first time last summer that the Second Amendment protects Americans’ right to carry guns outside the home for self-defense. In the past, authorities here said they received fewer than 20 applications a year.
Democratic leaders in states such as New York and California have sought to pass measures to blunt the effects of the ruling by imposing more thorough background investigations or training requirements for those seeking to carry concealed weapons in public. But a judge put most of the New York law on hold in October, and California’s failed to pass the state legislature.
That has left municipalities unaccustomed to issuing permits scrambling to come up with their own rules. In San Francisco, applicants must take a firearms training course and undergo a psychological exam, an extremely high bar for a U.S. city.
Most cities in California have begun issuing permits, but so far, the sheriff’s office and the police department in San Francisco have collectively approved just one permit since the Supreme Court ruling last June.
The slow pace has led to complaints from gun owners.
Andrew Solow, a 68-year-old private investigator, applied for a permit seven months ago to protect himself when he ventures into dangerous neighborhoods. He is still waiting for approval.
“That’s an obscenely long amount of time—it’s ludicrous,” he said. “I’m a licensed investigator.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Solow said he walks with a 66-inch wooden staff for self-defense.
A San Francisco police spokeswoman said the department “has been carefully undertaking great and reasonable efforts to expeditiously administrate a legal procedure” to grant applications.
Andrew Solow carries a stick for protection until he can carry a concealed gun.PHOTO: AMY OSBORNE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“We have to be very thorough in our vetting process,” said Tara Moriarty, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office.
San Francisco has a long history of strict firearms laws. The city’s last gun store and gun club both closed in 2015. As most states—and even many cities in California—began loosening restrictions on carrying concealed weapons in the past decade, the city remained an island. The police department said that before the Supreme Court ruling it issued just two permits for concealed weapons.
Catherine Stefani, a San Francisco supervisor, said she is drafting legislation to toughen standards for carrying firearms in public and to set out a list of sensitive places where guns will be restricted. Ms. Stefani criticized the Supreme Court decision as misguided and said it would “unleash more guns on our streets.”
Several permit seekers say they want to carry a firearm with them for self-defense.
The city has long had a high property crime rate, but while homicides spiked during the pandemic, the murder rate here is lower than many other large cities. The city’s homicide rate in 2021 climbed to 6.4 per 100,000 residents from 5.4 a year earlier; the national homicide rate in 2021 was 6.9 per 100,000, according to city and federal crime data.
Supervisor Catherine Stefani said she is drafting legislation to toughen standards for carrying firearms in public.PHOTO: GABRIELLE LURIE/SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/GETTY IMAGES
A 30-year-old manager at a distribution company said he sought a permit because of crime in his southeast San Francisco neighborhood and because of the highly publicized attacks against Asian residents during the pandemic.
“A lot of my friends who never had an interest in firearms before started stockpiling for the same reasons: lack of police response and the rise of Asian hate,” said the man who is Asian-American.
The 42-year-old electrician, a San Francisco native, said he wanted to carry a gun because he felt the city had become more dangerous since he was a child, when he says he would skateboard in the middle of the night.
“I’m not looking to help the cops. I’m not looking to be a tactical guru,” he said. “My sole position at this point is to be able to, as best as I can, protect myself and my family from someone that would have the wherewithal to do us harm.”
A Virginian homeowner shot a woman last week when she broke into his house stark naked and attacked him with a frying pan, say authorities.
Police arrived on the scene that night to discover the woman, 35-year-old Paula Locklear, with a gunshot wound to the leg. After investigating the incident further, they “determined that the shooting was the result of a breaking and entering.”
According to the New York Post and other sources, the homeowner heard a noise, and upon entering his kitchen, found “an unclothed female” who began hitting him with his own cast-iron pan.
The victim successfully locked her out on the back porch but authorities say that Locklear then found the electrical breaker and turned off the electricity to the house.
She began to beat on the window, yelling that the homeowner had better “get out of his house or she would kill him”.
When Locklear resumed beating on the door that she had originally entered through, the homeowner was forced to fire a shot, hitting her in the leg.
The homeowner is not currently being charged, says Fox News, with authorities deeming it a self-defense shooting.
The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office stated that Locklear is being charged with “breaking and entering with a weapon, assault and battery, and damage of property.”
Locklear was brought by officials to a hospital to be treated for her wound before being incarcerated in the county jail.
The homeowner made a tough call but ultimately it comes down to self-defense and he was lucky to have been prepared for any situation.
Thomas Armstrong spoke at the vigil for his son, Elias Armstrong, on Thursday night and said the man who fatally shot his 12-year-old boy was acting like a “vigilante.”
On the previous Sunday, a man tracked down his stolen car with a GPS cellphone app. The man, who police have not identified, found his vehicle at the intersection of West 12th Avenue and North Decatur Street in Denver, CO.
According to police, the occupants of the stolen car fired at the unidentified owner. The car’s owner fired back in retaliation and wounded the 12-year-old driver.
The young boy then drove the car to West 10th Avenue and Federal Boulevard, where police found him injured with a gunshot wound. He was taken to a local hospital but later died.
Armstrong said he was told by a police detective last week that the perpetrators in the stolen car fired one or two shots while the car’s owner, who tracked them in another car via a GPS cellphone app, fired 15 rounds, “emptying his clip”, The Denver Gazette reported. According to Armstrong, authorities are unsure of who fired first.
A surveillance video shows the Feb. 5 shootout lasted only seconds as the stolen car’s owner drives up and parks in front of his stolen Audi. He gets out and rushes toward his stolen vehicle. After a short burst of gunfire, the Audi drives away.
“He approached the car with the gun, running to the car, and (then he) pulled the gun out and started shooting right away. He was upset at these kids for taking his car and he’s angry. And he’s coming to kill these kids over his car,” Thomas Armstrong said at the vigil. “It was pretty much vigilante justice.”
Police said when the owner of the stolen car approached it, there was an “exchange of gunfire” with at least one person inside the car.
Other than the brief statement, the police have declined to comment further or release any documents on the case because the shooting and the theft are both active investigations.
According to police, witnesses reported other people appearing to flee before officers arrived on the scene.
The office of Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said it would not charge the unidentified owner of the stolen car because it did not believe it could prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
In a statement Thursday, McCann said she met with the family last week to explain the decision which she said is based on the “self-defense issues which were present at the time.”
“My heart goes out to Elias Armstrong’s family in this time of terrible and overwhelming grief,” she said.
The Denver police are still investigating the incident and searching for the other individuals involved in the car theft.
Young adults who live in Texas are now eligible to obtain concealed carry licenses that will allow them to bear arms in certain businesses and at public universities.
In January, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) stopped enforcing a law barring 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds from carrying handguns.
The change was prompted by a federal district court case that struck down the law as unconstitutional.
The legal battle over the law began in November 2021 when the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), a pro-gun organization, filed suit, following the passage of constitutional carry in Texas.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of two plaintiffs who were adults under the age of 21 and, therefore, were prohibited from bearing arms under Texas Penal Code 46.02.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman issued his ruling in the case, finding that the age limits in the statute were in violation of the 2nd Amendment.
“[The statute] prohibits law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying handguns for self-defense outside the home based solely on their age, this statutory scheme violates the Second Amendment, as incorporated against the States via the Fourteenth Amendment,” Pittman wrote in his decision.
“We applaud Texas for doing the right thing and accepting the district court’s ruling against its law prohibiting 18-to-20-year-old adults from carrying firearms in public,” said FPC attorney Cody J. Wisniewski in a statement on the FBC website.
“Not only do young adults have the same constitutionally protected right to bear arms as all other adults, they are also among the reasons we have a Second Amendment, Constitution, and Country in the first place,” he added.
Texas DPS Director Steven McCraw initially filed a notice of appeal following the late August decision. However, the agency withdrew its appeal without explanation last December.
A DPS memo sent out in January cited the case, and advised officers that they may no longer enforce the law, adding, “This directive has immediate and permanent effect unless countermanded by the Office of General Counsel through your chain of command.”
Following the DPS memo, the agency’s handgun licensing website now states, “A federal district court has ruled the Department can no longer apply the License to Carry statutory eligibility criteria that prohibit otherwise eligible 18-to-20 year-olds from obtaining the license. Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc. et. al., v. Steven McCraw, et. al., No. 4:21-cv-1245-P. The Department will therefore no longer deny applications solely on the basis that the applicants are 18-to-20 years old.”
Indeed, DPS has already begun issuing handgun licenses to the formerly-affected population, and gun rights proponents believe it is just the beginning.
According to the Dallas Morning News, since the decision to abandon the appeal, and the issuance of the memo, the department said it has received more than 100 applications from newly eligible adults and issued 17 licenses as of the end of February.
“As more people find out, there’s going to be an influx,” said Michael Cargill, who owns a gun store in Austin. Earlier this month, he said two 19-year-old college students sat before him in his handgun licensing class, pens in hand, ready to get their licenses to carry.
Cargill is noted as being the primary plaintiff in the lawsuit against the Department of Justice that saw the federal bump stock ban get overturned.
As gun control laws are scaled back in the post-Bruen legal landscape, additional lawsuits brought by the FPC in a wide swathe of jurisdictions that prohibit adults under 21 from bearing arms are sure to follow Andrew v McCraw’s victory in the 5th Circuit.
Of course, as litigation advances in such cases as Lara v. Evanchick (vs. Pennsylvania, in the 3rd Circuit), Reese v. ATF (vs. the federal government, in the 5th Circuit), Beeler v. Long (vs. Tennessee, in the 6th Circuit), Meyer v. Raoul (vs. Illinois, in the 7th Circuit), Worth v. Harrington (vs. Minnesota, in the 8th Circuit), Jones v. Bonta (vs. California, in the 9th Circuit), and Baughcum v. Jackson (vs. Georgia, in the 11th Circuit), stay tuned for updates!