Freedom for security

I must admit I was truly surprised by the citizens of San Francisco who voted on Nov. 8 to ban firearms from the city. I honestly believe that they would not allow such an obviously unconstitutional and futile proposed law to see the light of day.

Ben Franklin wrote: "Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither."

His words may bring to light their full meaning when San Francisco citizens become prisoners in their own homes if this law is allowed its course.

G.L. Chase

Altus, Okl.

No bloody shoot-outs

Your closing statements in your recommendation regarding Proposition H are as follows: "This is reasonable speculation. These things could come to pass. But there's another possibility here, as well: Prop. H may end up saving lives, and if so, San Francisco would serve as a national model for curbing urban violence.

"Given the gravity of the situation, it's certainly worth a try" [Endorsements, 10/12/05].

We already have "national models" operating along the lines you are advocating. They are called Washington, DC, and Chicago, both of which would certainly not be, by any stretch of the imagination, good examples of gun-banning results. Why is it that the supporters of these bans can't see that this has been tried in other places and failed, miserably failed?

This is the same head-in-the-sand position taken by gun-ban supporters when concealed weapons proposals come up in a state. "Blood in the streets," "shoot-outs at the OK Corral," and "road rage shootings," they claim, will be the order of the day. This has never come about in any state in which concealed carry has become law.

Dale Davis

Punta Gorda, Fla.

Supply and demand

This is in response to "The Attack of the Million-dollar Condos," 10/19/05.

Tim Redmond goes too far in suggesting a five-year ban on all new market-rate housing in San Francisco. How does he think the market rate for housing got so high in the first place? My guess is that there isn't enough supply to meet the demand. Restricting the supply is just going to push prices even higher. Just as an oversupply of office space has pushed office rents down to a reasonable level, only by building enough housing to meet the demand can prices come down to a level where the next generation of teachers, nurses, Muni drivers, carpenters, and cops can afford to buy houses here.

David Zebker

San Francisco

The merger problem

It is hard not to strongly concur with Mr. Brugmann's free speech and unfair competition concerns regarding the proposed merger of New Times and Village Voice Media ["Lockyer: Stop the Merger," 11/10/05]. Certainly, any reasonable person or adjudicator would have to be extremely troubled by a publishing conglomerate that would extend to anything near 25 percent of this large and diverse country's alt-weekly readership. And how nonmainstream can a publishing behemoth really be, especially one that standardizes advertising and content in presumably different newsweeklies in San Francisco, the East Bay, Seattle, Los Angeles, Orange County, Denver, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New York, Nashville, Ft. Lauderdale, and Miami and has business relationships in the Chicago, San Jose, and San Diego markets? When you get right down to it, there aren't many other major media markets left in America. Furthermore, how can actual alternative – and typically smaller – publishers of alt-newsweeklies reasonably compete, for the advertisers they necessarily rely upon, against an accommodating publishing giant that can reach advertisers' consumer targets across the country? In a hostile corporate environment that ever increasingly favors national and international brand names and chain outlets, it is readily foreseeable that advertisers will regularly prefer a publisher whose ads reach across the United States to a publisher whose ads are limited to a single metropolitan area or region.

Three things ought to be done: First, the proposed merger should be prohibited – in the first place by the federal government and, if not by it, then by our state attorney general. Second, it is quite clear that these two corporations have not learned from their previous effort to stifle free-press alternative viewpoints in Los Angeles and Cleveland, and stiff federal and state fines and penalties should be imposed on both for their continued efforts. The consent decree they agreed to in 2003 should have included enforcement provisions in the event of continued misconduct, and a proposed merger of the two should be prima facie evidence of continued improper collusion. Third, perhaps it is in the best interests of a free press generally and the vast majority of members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies specifically, to consider stripping New Times, Village Voice Media, and their papers of membership from that important organization.

Ivan Smason, Ph.D., J.D

Santa Monica

For the record

In "Short Cuts" (11/2/05), Chris R. Brown was mistakenly identified as the director of the 1999 film Metal. That film's director is Christopher E. Brown.