San Francisco MTA Punked (bumped)

The San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority has rather rigid guidelines for the ads they will accept. For example, they won't take any advertising that “appears to promote the use of firearms.” They even forced the new Will Farrell/Mark Wahlberg movie "The Other Guys" to change their ads so that it featured a can of Mace instead of a pistol.

Poster for GRPC on MTA bus stop (Calguns.net/forums)

However, the MTA was no match for the fearless duo of the CalGuns Foundation and the Second Amendment Foundation. According to Alan Gottlieb, he believes that MTA violated its own ad guidelines because "they believed we were prepared to file a lawsuit on First and Second Amendment grounds if, for any reason, the city didn’t take them."

Gene Hoffman posted a crytic note on the CalGuns.net forum last night that said:

If anyone lives or works in the City, please stop by the following locations and report back (photos would be awesome) on what, if anything, you see there

Townsend St SS 86ft E/O 4th St F/E - 2
Masonic Ave WS 44ft N/O Hayes St F/N - 1
Geary Blvd NS 61ft E/O Divisadero St F/W - 2
Fulton St NS 94ft W/O 8th Ave F/W - 2
Mission St NS 86ft W/O 8th St F/W - 2
Polk St WS 23ft N/O Sutter St F/N - 1
North Point St NS 44ft W/O Polk St F/E - 1
Jackson St NS 38ft E/O Van Ness Ave F/W - 2
Columbus Ave WS 61ft S/O North Point St F/S - 2
Van Ness Ave WS 34ft S/O Greenwich St F/N - 1
McAllister St NS 28ft W/O Webster St F/E - 1
Lincoln Way SS 30ft W/O 21st Ave F/W - 1
Stockton St WS 181ft S/O Clay St F/N - 1
Haight St SS 39ft W/O Pierce St F/W - 1
Geary Blvd NS 24ft E/O 3rd Ave F/E - 1
Main St ES 269ft S/O Howard St F/N - 2

-Gene

Speculation ran rampant that this was going to be another LCAV non-event or other guerrilla action against the anti-gunners. The result is what you see above - an in-your-face poster (with a shotgun) that promotes the Gun Rights Policy Conference in San Francisco. These posters appear on 15 bus stops scattered around San Francisco.

Way to go CGF and SAF! There is nothing like taking a guerrilla war to the heart of the enemies's territory.

UPDATE: If you go to the link above to Calguns.net, you can see more of the GRPC posters around San Francisco.

UPDATE II: According to a report from CBS News, the San Francisco MTA is investigating whether the GRPC posters violate their policy on ads promoting the use of firearms. It looks like they are getting pressure from the SF Board of Supervisors to take them down. All of this publicity is making Alan Gottlieb happy. If they take down the ads, he'd be even more happy saying " "All I can do is pray that all the publicity will make them want to decide to take down the ads -- so we can sue!"

UPDATE III: Thanks to a reader of Snowflakesinhell.com, I see that the New York Times is now covering the story.

On Friday, riders waiting at a bus stop displaying the pro-gun poster seemed unaware that they had previously been shielded from such images. “I don’t want to see guns,” said Zsuzsanna Legradi, a 42-year-old gardener. “No one should have guns. It is bad enough that people have knives.”

Imagine her horror at seeing the Toyota Prius in this post.