'Why I Love San Francisco': City Board Applauded for Labeling NRA 'Domestic Terrorist Organization'

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors this week unanimously passed a resolution that declares the National Rifle Association a "domestic terrorist organization" and urges other cities, states, and the federal government to follow suit--a move that was applauded by advocates for stricter gun laws in the United States.

The vote was celebrated on Twitter Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink:

"Yes. More of this," tweeted filmmaker Michael Moore, who pointed to the nation's high rates of gun-related deaths over the past two decades as context for the move.

Shannon Watts, founder of the Mom's Demand Action movement, also took to Twitter to welcome the vote and praise San Francisco District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani for writing the resolution.

San Francisco's board approved the resolution (pdf) Tuesday, in the wake of a mass shooting in Texas over the weekend. "The United States is plagued by an epidemic of gun violence," it notes, detailing some statistics about U.S. gun violence and highlighting the Gilroy, California massacre in July--one of 291 mass shootings in the United States in 2019 alone, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.

"The National Rifle Association musters its considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence," reads the resolution. The NRA's leadership "promotes extremist positions, in defiance of the views of a majority of its membership and the public, and undermine the general welfare."

The resolution says the NRA "spreads propaganda that misinforms and aims to deceive the public about the dangers of gun violence," and "through its advocacy has armed those individuals who would and have committed acts of terrorism."

The document calls on the City and County of San Francisco to "take every reasonable step to assess the financial and contractual relationships our vendors and contractors have with this domestic terrorist organization," and limit entities who do business with the city and county from doing business with the NRA.

Stefani, the resolution's author, told KQED that "the NRA conspires to limit gun violence research, restrict gun violence data sharing and most importantly aggressively tries to block every piece of sensible gun violence prevention legislation proposed on any level, local state or federal."

In a statement to The New York Times, Stefani added that "nobody has done more to fan the flames of gun violence than the NRA."

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre responded to the San Francisco resolution in a video that was exclusively provided to the right-wing Breitbart News ahead of its public release.

"I shake my head and I go 'what the heck is going wrong in our country?'" LaPierre says in the video.

Despite his intention, given the rates of gun-related deaths in the U.S. each year, that's a good question.