San Francisco, CA
Advocates rally for gun control at San Francisco City Hall
Advocates for gun control rallied against firearms violence on the steps of San Francisco City Hall Friday as Mayor Daniel Lurie proclaimed it Gun Violence Awareness Day in the city.
Organizers from several nonprofit organizations that work on legislative, preventative, and awareness programs related to gun control shared their experiences and campaign goals. Multiple members of the Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Paul Miyamoto made remarks, detailing efforts to reduce gun violence and thanking supporters for their work.
The rally was organized by the nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety and its associated group Moms Demand Action.
About two dozen people stood on the steps of City Hall, most of them wearing orange in support of another campaign by Everytown for Gun Safety, which calls on supporters to wear orange this weekend to create awareness about gun violence.
Advocates for stronger gun control, including some who have lost family members to firearms, spoke about solutions such as requiring background checks to purchase firearm barrels to prevent their use in firearms made with 3D printers.
Other solutions included local legislation that could make it possible to voluntarily have a firearm stored out of the house in San Francisco and supporting gun buyback programs, which offer cash for turning in firearms.
Some of the organizations represented at the rally were Brady, formerly known as the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, the organization Pierce’s Pledge, which seeks to protect children from gun violence during family law matters, and United Playaz, a San Francisco-based youth development and violence prevention organization.
Advocates for healthcare and youth-based solutions also called for policy changes.
Ruth Borenstein, the co-leader of San Francisco’s Brady chapter, and the leader of Brady’s state legislative campaigns, told the crowd of a few dozen people that California has made great progress in its gun control efforts after previously being the state with the highest gun violence mortality rate.
She said advocacy campaigns like the organization’s push to ban ghost guns in San Francisco, and later, statewide, showed that change is possible.
She highlighted one of Brady’s current priorities of getting state legislation passed that would require background checks to purchase a gun barrel. That could prevent people from making plastic guns with 3D printers from accessing a critical gun part that cannot be reliably printed.
“The new twist in 3D printed guns is that they have these barrels that are plastic and they can’t really withstand the shock, so you might get one or two shots off, and it might even explode in your hand, so people are using the steel barrels that are in normal guns, and they’re doing all the 3D printing except for the barrel. They buy a barrel online or in the gun store,” she said.
Safe gun storage was a priority for multiple speakers, including Lesley Hu, who started Pierce’s Pledge after her 9-year-old son Pierce was murdered in San Francisco by his father during a custody dispute in 2021.
The pledge asks lawyers and other involved parties to do what they can to prevent gun violence during family law proceedings, including communicating the risks of gun violence during divorce and custody disputes. Hu said 120 family lawyers had signed the pledge.
On average, a child is murdered roughly every six days in the United States by a parent involved in a custody dispute. Almost half of those deaths involve firearms, according to the nonprofit legal organization Center for Judicial Excellence, which has been tracking such killings since 2008.
Since then, at least 989 children have been killed by a divorcing or separating parent, including 456 who died after being shot, according to the organization.
Hu pointed out that the vast majority of firearms used in suicides and school shootings come from guns kept at home.
“It takes each one of us to know about guns in the home and what to do with them, because at some time in your life, there might be a friend, or a sister, or a daughter that is in a critical moment in their life, and there might be a gun, and you could be that one that helps save their life or their children’s life by telling them they can take that deadly weapon out of the home,” Hu told supporters.
The second part of Pierce’s Pledge commits lawyers working in family law to “pledge to expect my clients to declare weapons and guns they may have in their possession and that they store them in a secure off-site location with a third-party or otherwise separate themselves from those firearms during the case, or as may be required under state or federal law.”
To create more ways to voluntarily store firearms out of a residence, Pierce’s Pledge’s firearm storage specialist Cody Dougherty successfully lobbied for the state to pass Senate Bill 368 in 2023, which requires federally licensed firearms dealers to store firearms for someone who requests the service.
California is the only state that has such a requirement, according to Dougherty.
Pierce’s Pledge created a nationwide map to help locate a gun dealer who has affirmed that they offer voluntary gun storage.
But San Francisco’s last federally licensed gun store closed in 2015, leaving nowhere in the city to temporarily store a firearm outside of a residence.
That’s why San Francisco Supervisor Stephen Sherrill is working with the San Francisco Police Department to create such a program, he said. He also said he is crafting legislation that would create options to store firearms without going through law enforcement.
“If you’re in crisis, you shouldn’t be anywhere near a handgun and we want people to have an option to voluntarily give their handgun to law enforcement, to a self-storage facility, which, right now in San Francisco, is not possible,” he said.
He said the legislation was still in its beginning stages and could not offer a timeline to establish the program.
Representatives for the youth development group United Playaz also held signs and spoke at the rally. The group holds gun buybacks and hosts youth educational and community events.
Founder and executive director Rudy Valintino said the organization’s gun buybacks have made an impact in getting guns off the street, and said teaching youth about the risks of gun violence is a crucial component of gun control.
“There’s so many different dimensions that we could attack, but the most important to me is education to young people,” he said.
United Playaz is opening a new headquarters at 1044 Howard St., with a ribbon cutting scheduled for Thursday at 11 a.m.
Everytown for Gun Violence will hold a march across the Golden Gate Bridge while wearing orange on Saturday at 11 a.m. from the San Francisco side of the bridge. The organization will also host events Saturday in Richmond and Pleasanton that require an RSVP. Participants can find out more information and register at https://momsdemandaction.org/events.
Santa Rosa prepares for next big earthquake
The Great 1906 earthquake devastated the Bay Area, destroying much of San Francisco and killing more than 3,000 people. The city marked the quakes 120th anniversary this weekend, but whats not as widely recognized is the damage to surrounding comunities like Santa Rosa.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. – While the Great 1906 Earthquake was a centerpiece of news around the world when its massive damage and fire destroyed much of San Francisco and took 3,000 lives, another far smaller, far less famous town, suffered massive damage almost forgotten by history.
Nearly forgotten
On this day 120 years ago, stunned people were digging for survivors two nights after the quake. Like a demon in the night, the Great 1906 Earthquake also came to Santa Rosa also bent on mass death and destruction.
Eric Stanley is the history curator and deputy director of the Museum of Sonoma County in Santa Rosa that supplied these pictures. “Santa Rosa, in particular, was devastated by the 1906 earthquake,” he said.
Survivors were shaken awake as whole buildings collapsed around them or on them. “A good portion, a really significant portion, of downtown Santa Rosa was completely destroyed,” said Stanley.
Many never woke up; crushed to death in their sleep. There were over a hundred people killed in the 1906 earthquake in Santa Rosa that only had 7,000 people in it at the time,” said the curator.
Active fault line
Sixty-three years later, in 1969, a time of budding, but far better science-based building codes, a double shaker nonetheless did significant damage and killed one person. “Even understanding all those things, you kind of at the earlier stage of that in the sixties,” said Stanley.
Today, four of Santa Rosa’s School buildings lie near or on the Rodgers Creek Earthquake Fault, capable of up to a 7.3 magnitude rupture. One is already closed with another due to close at the end of the school year for budgetary reasons.
That leaves two elementary schools, Hidden Valley, alongside the fault and Proctor, on the fault. The school board says both are seismically sound and safe to continue operating. “The two that are remaining open are both the ones that have the potential and the ability to grow because the entire site is not impacted by the fault line,” said Nick Caston, Santa Rosa City School Board president.
Staying prepared
In other words, things can and will eventually be moved around.
“What we’re gonna end up having to do is redesign the campus over the next several decades to have our fields and our parking in the front, which are totally acceptable to be over a fault line and actually move our academic builds and our student-serving buildings to the back,” said Caston.
Ultimately, the pictures and relics museums hold from natural disasters are given to those who come, a lesson and a warning. “Real people went through these experiences and we really do have to be aware of that and do our very best to prepare for those kinds of things,” said Stanley.
The 1933 Field Act requires earthquake-safe construction of schools, with evolving seismic codes as we learn more.
A California sea lion pup found last week on a San Francisco street corner is malnourished but “active and quite feisty,” The Marine Mammal Center said Monday.
The sea lion, believed to be about 10 months old, had apparently wandered into city’s Outer Sunset neighborhood and was discovered early Thursday morning, authorities said.
The pup was spotted near 48th and Irving Streets, one block from Ocean Beach and Sunset Dunes park. A trained responder from the Marine Mammal Center was joined by San Francisco park rangers and police officers to safely corral the pup, now named ‘Irving’, into a carrier crate.
Dubbed ‘Irving’ by his rescuers, Irving weighed in at 40 pounds and is considered malnourished, the Marine Mammal Center said.
“The sea lion is active and quite feisty which is a positive initial sign in terms of general behavior,” the center said in a news release on Monday.
During an exam by veterinarians, a series of blood samples were also taken to determine whether there’s any underlying ailment.
Irving is being tube fed a fish smoothie blend two times per day to boost hydration and weight; offers of whole herring will also begin shortly.
The quick actions by police, recreation and parks staff and Ocean Avenue Animal Hospital gave the young sea lion a second chance at life, said Lauren Campbell, animal husbandry manager at The Marine Mammal Center.
“As a roughly 10-month-old pup in his first year of learning how to forage on his own, this animal has a long road to recovery due to his severe malnutrition,” Campbell said. “We are hopeful that in the coming weeks with continued specialized care that this pup starts to make positive strides toward recovery and release.”
Irving will be held in the Center’s Intensive Quarantine Unit until clearing medical protocols, before likely being transferred this week to a traditional rehabilitation pool pen. A long-term prognosis and potential release timeline are not currently known.
After Sunday’s 3-0 loss to the Washington Nationals, the San Francisco Giants headed back to the West Coast. They’re going back to the Bay Area, too.
The Giants have a date with the Los Angeles Dodgers for a three-game series at Oracle Park starting Tuesday night.
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So, San Francisco probably wanted to get out of Washington, D.C., with a win. That didn’t happen at Nationals Park on Sunday afternoon.
Nationals reliever Andrew Alvarez, the third pitcher used by the team on Sunday, picked up the victory with 4 1/3 innings of work. Giants starter Robbie Ray absorbed the loss, falling to 2-3 this season.
Ray worked six innings, giving up seven hits, three runs (all earned), walking one, and striking out seven Nationals. If the Giants’ offense had found a way to tack on some runs, then Ray’s outing wouldn’t have looked so bad.
The Giants’ bats, though, had eight hits. The big number for Giants manager Tony Vitello to look at in the box score after this one was, well, pretty big. San Francisco left 10 runners on base on Sunday, going 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. This indicates that San Francisco had plenty of opportunities to score some runs.
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They just didn’t get the job done.
Let’s go to the bottom of the fifth with the Giants and Nationals in a scoreless tie. With nobody out, the Nationals’ Keibert Ruiz connected for his third double this season. Nasim Nuñez scored to put Washington up 1-0.
With one out, Curtis Mead sent a Ray pitch over the left-field wall, a two-run blast that gave the Nationals a 3-0 lead.
San Francisco had a scoring threat in the top of the eighth inning. With runners at first and second base and nobody out, Casey Schmitt grounded into a double play. Matt Chapman, who was on second base, went to third. But the Giants were unable to bring him home.
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Rafael Devers and Drew Gilbert went 2-for-4 at the plate for the Giants, producing half of the Giants’ hits.
The Giants fall to 9-13 this season, sitting in fourth place in the National League West Division. The Nationals’ record goes to 10-12, good enough for third place in the National League East Division.
All eyes now turn toward Oracle on Tuesday night. It’ll be a chance for two longtime rivals to renew their rivalry.
Baseball fans know that the Giants-Dodgers matchups usually are must-see TV.
That’s probably going to be the case once again as Giants fans watch their team battle the Dodgers. Those lucky to have tickets to the three-game series at Oracle Park will show up in Giants colors, hoping to see Los Angeles head back to Southern California with either a series loss or a Giants’ sweep.
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Buckle up, Giants fans. It’s about to get rowdy at Oracle Park.
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