Inside of Highbridge Arms. Photo: Highbridge Arms Facebook page.
Earlier this week, San Francisco's last gun shop, Highbridge Arms, announced that it is closing its doors in October 2015. Here's an excerpt from their Facebook page:
Dear friends and family, it's with tremendous sadness and regret that I have to announce we are closing our shop. For many reasons I cannot get into at this moment, it appears our final days will be through to the end of October of 2015. We will clearance out what ever inventory we have in the shop and offer sale prices for anything you would like us to order.
For all our true friends and followers, I would like to sincerely thank you for all your support, likes, positive feedback and best of all, your friendship. Hopefully, we'll see you soon. It has been a long and difficult ride, but a great pleasure to be you're last San Francisco Gun shop.
Our warm regards,
High Bridge Arms
It's no secret that San Francisco has many anti-gun politicians in the Mayor's office, the Board of Supervisors, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi represents the city as well. While there has been no official comment from Highbridge Arms as to why they are closing, we can speculate that years of political pressure, an anti-gun climate in San Francisco, and anti-gun legislation and laws created a super storm making it challenging to run a gun shop in city limits.
Adding insult to injury is the incredible and dramatic increase in rent for businesses and residents over the past 6-7 years. Making ends meet for the gun shop and its employees may not have been a sustainable proposition.
As Highbridge Arms was my home gun shop, I will be very sad to see it go. There is no official word if they are relocating or simply going for good. I hope they will relocate to somewhere in the Bay Area so we can ensure that San Franciscans can exercise their Second Amendment right.
With Highbridge moving out, it will be interesting to see what will happen to legislation the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering which would require video taping gun and ammunition sales, and sharing ammo sales data with SFPD. My guess is that even with Highbridge closing by the time they vote on this, they will pass it in the hopes to keep any future gun shops from trying to open in the future.
It will be interesting to see if any viable lawsuits come up in the future which argue that San Francisco has a de facto gun ban since it will (soon) have zero gun shops, or something along those lines. I'm not a lawyer, but I sense potential for legal action by some organization down the line.
Anyway, thanks again to my friends at Highbridge for supporting my career and being great friends. You will truly be missed here in San Francisco, and I hope folks go visit them before the end of October when they shutter their doors.
Adding insult to injury is the incredible and dramatic increase in rent for businesses and residents over the past 6-7 years. Making ends meet for the gun shop and its employees may not have been a sustainable proposition.
As Highbridge Arms was my home gun shop, I will be very sad to see it go. There is no official word if they are relocating or simply going for good. I hope they will relocate to somewhere in the Bay Area so we can ensure that San Franciscans can exercise their Second Amendment right.
With Highbridge moving out, it will be interesting to see what will happen to legislation the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering which would require video taping gun and ammunition sales, and sharing ammo sales data with SFPD. My guess is that even with Highbridge closing by the time they vote on this, they will pass it in the hopes to keep any future gun shops from trying to open in the future.
It will be interesting to see if any viable lawsuits come up in the future which argue that San Francisco has a de facto gun ban since it will (soon) have zero gun shops, or something along those lines. I'm not a lawyer, but I sense potential for legal action by some organization down the line.
Anyway, thanks again to my friends at Highbridge for supporting my career and being great friends. You will truly be missed here in San Francisco, and I hope folks go visit them before the end of October when they shutter their doors.
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