Next month will mark the end of an era in San Francisco as the city’s sole remaining gun shop closes its doors. High Bridge Arms has been in business at the same location since the 1950s, but with the next round of city regulations and restrictions on gun dealers (which means just High Bridge) the city fathers have found the straw required to break the camel’s back. It’s a glorious day for liberals. (Fox News)

Business for the last gun shop in the city of 840,000 has been good, according to Alcairo, especially since the store, which caters to law enforcement and outdoors enthusiasts, announced it would close next month. Situated in the prominent city heart of Mission Street, High Bridge Arms was founded in the mid-1950s by Bob Chow, who competed in the 1948 Olympics 25-yard pistol shooting event. By some accounts a Bay Area institution, it has long been a tourist destination – specially for members of the law enforcement community who visit the city. “I found the staff to be friendly, decent, law-abiding people who have been harassed by the San Francisco anti-gun crowd for quite some time,” Jim Wilson, a retired sheriff from Alpine, Texas, told FoxNews.com as he recalled stopping by the shop during a visit to San Francisco a few years back.

The new city laws were so far over the top that it’s difficult to imagine them surviving a court challenge, but the owners apparently don’t feel like converting their entire operation into little more than a legal defense fund to keep fighting the liberal legislature. They were going to force them to record videos of every customer in the store and keep those videos available permanently. The personal information of every customer would have to be turned over to the police department each and every week even if there wasn’t a hint of an allegation that any crime had taken place. In short, the rules were designed to force the shop to harass their own customers mercilessly to the point where no reasonable person would want to shop there anyway.

As the general manager viewed it, the writing was on the wall.

“This time, it’s the idea of filming our customers taking delivery of items after they already completed waiting periods,” Alcairo said. “We feel this is a tactic designed to discourage customers from coming to us. “This year, it’s this and next year will probably be something else,” Alcairo added. “We don’t want to wait for it.”

The reason this is such a huge victory for the Left is that they’ve finally found an escape hatch to go around the courts and the Second Amendment. They were unable to flatly make guns illegal or to order the closure of a legally operated business, but with one strike after another they were able to finally harass them into closing. The real world effect is negligible, of course, since law abiding gun owners can still go somewhere else to purchase their guns, but it’s still a “moral” victory in terms of driving the evil gun shop out of their peace loving neighborhood.

And hey… it’s not like San Francisco is full of crime to the point where citizens would need to arm themselves, right?

The Sanctuary City is sending a clear message to the gun shop owners and an even clearer message to criminals and illegal immigrants. Feel free to stop by! We don’t sell any guns to your prospective victims!

The San Francisco Police Department should simply close up shop and leave these people to the fate they so richly deserve.