Gun group scores hit against SF image ban

SAN FRANCISCO -- A Supreme Court decision could alter what riders here see in ads on city buses and trains and in transit shelters.

Pro-gun images, which are banned under an ad policy of the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency, showed up recently on posters for a conference for the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights group based in Washington.

The group spent $10,000 to have the posters, which feature a woman with a shotgun, hung at bus stops.

The poster's red type reads: "A violent criminal is breaking through your front door. Can you afford to be unarmed?"

The group printed the posters after learning that posters for the film "The Other Guys," starring Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, had been altered to comply with the transit agency's policy. At box offices, on billboards and in bus stops across the country, the movie's poster depicted the actors with guns in each hand.

On posters here, though, the guns were replaced with pepper spray canisters, police badges and bare hands.

When Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, read that Wahlberg and Ferrell had been stripped of their weapons, he had 16 posters printed to promote the group's gun rights policy conference, scheduled to be held here. To his surprise, the posters were installed last week in what a news release called "something of a coup."

Paul Rose, a spokesman for the city transportation agency, said that after the gun group's posters went up, the city decided to take another look at its policy.

"At this point, we're not taking any action to remove the ads. We are currently reviewing our advertising policy in light of the recent Supreme Court decision, which may have altered the legal landscape regarding firearm advertising."

That would be the June 28 decision in McDonald v. Chicago, in which the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the right to bear arms guaranteed under the Second Amendment applies to state and local gun control laws.