(Photo courtesy of High Bridge Arms)
The sign advertises Glocks at good prices. There’s a picture of one on the door. But inside the guns under glass look like toys -- plastic parts and non-metallic colors make me expect to see “G.I. Joe” action figures an aisle down. But High Bridge Arms is very real.
Just off the intersection of Mission and Valencia this small store about the size of a hole in the wall coffee house is, according to the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the last gun shop in San Francisco.
When city officials talk about controlling legal gun dealers, they’re talking about High Bridge. Part of the new gun control package likely to be voted into law would require High Bridge Arms to provide the city a copy of their inventory every six months so that police could know what they’ve got in stock, and what they’ve put out onto the street.
Employees at High Bridge, who wouldn’t speak on record, were philosophical about it. “We don’t take it personally,” one said. “That’s San Francisco. It’s tough. But, if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”
That may be exactly what the Board of Supervisor’s has in mind. “I absolutely feel there shouldn’t be any gun shops.” Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said at Monday’s public safety committee meeting. If city hall accidentally regulates our last gun dealer out of business, it won’t be so accidental.
In the Midwestern gun culture where I grew up, small stores like High Bridge Arms are a vanishing breed. Now under its third owner (who wouldn’t comment for this article), the store has been in San Francisco since the early 1950s. In a city where arms control isn’t controlled enough, it makes most of its money selling to law enforcement officials and exporting to other countries (I can’t decide if that’s innovative or disturbing). It’s got a certain … dignity … that big box firearm stores lack. Don’t believe me? Check out Don’s Guns in Indianapolis … arguably the biggest weapons extravaganza in the country.
A cultural institution in the same way that child abuse is a cultural institution, Don’s incredibly creepy commercials run night and day on local television. His trademark laugh at the end of each commercial hasn’t changed in 20 years.
I don’t think there will be many tears shed around here if High Bridge can’t stand the heat. I won’t shed any. But, if we have to have a gun dealer, don’t we want it to be a small, neighborhood, dealer? I mean, shop local, right? It’s that or the occasional big gun show at the Cow Palace in Daly City -- and if it comes down to a choice between High Bridge in San Francisco or guns-a-rama just outside … well, there is a lesser of two evils here.
Actually, there are a few other ways to legally get a gun in San Francisco. In all, there are six federal gun licenses in the city that include the ability to sell, according to the city based Legal Community Against Violence. High Bridge only has one of them.
Two others are for auction houses, one of which occasionally sells antique firearms, the other of which specializes in antique weapons and armor. Another is for an engineering service “specializing in injury biomechanics, accident reconstruction, and failure analysis of mechanical systems.”
The fifth is for the assistant prop master at the San Francisco Opera. “For the most part, all we ever use are blank guns, but we do have a license to use the real thing,” an opera employee said. “In order to be able to use anything, even if we’re not loading it, we need to be able to follow the law.”
Okay, but, I’m watching you..
The sixth identifies itself … very cautiously … as “Alfred’s Gunsmith Service” which appears (based on scant evidence) to be a home businesses selling and repairing guns that is … so far … under the city’s radar. They don’t like to talk to strangers (“Who are you?” said the lady picking up the phone) but if you know Alfred you might be in luck.
How Alfred takes to the city’s likely new gun regulations is anybody’s guess. The rest of us will probably never even notice they’re here. Does that mean they’re effective?
--Benjamin Wachs
