San Francisco's only gun store could lose its permit to sell guns at a hearing today.

But even if it wins, Steven Alcairo, the manager at High Bridge Arms on Mission Street, fears that his store will lose the greater war - the one over the neighborhood.

Alcairo, 36, a San Francisco native and Mission District resident, will ask the Police Department to reinstate a use permit that lapsed in January because the gun store's owner was planning to convert it to office space.

The city denied the office proposal, Alcairo said, and, faced with an empty retail space, the owner wanted to return the store to what it's done for five decades on Mission near Valencia Street - sell guns.

"Our store has been a member of this community longer than most neighbors who live here," Alcairo said. "It doesn't make sense to us that a small percentage of them are suddenly upset that we're here and want us to leave."

In May, when High Bridge Arms asked to renew the permit, three neighborhood groups, led by the North West Bernal Alliance, asked the city to turn it down.

The conflict has been framed as an only-in-San Francisco values dispute - latte liberals vs. Second Amendment gun nuts - and has drawn attention from the National Rifle Association, some of whose members started a letter-writing campaign to the city's permit officers.

Beyond the sound-bite clash, however, the debate has focused on what is best for the Mission District today - with the protagonists being two people who have made it their home for decades.

Jaime Ross, 63, has lived two blocks off Mission Street since 1971 - "during the Wild Wild West days," she says. As treasurer of the North West Bernal Alliance, she helped plant trees along the strip south of Cesar Chavez Street, back when Cesar's Latin Palace hosted salsa dance-ups and the occasional shootout.

Neighborhood store

"We just want to see something in that space the neighborhood could use," Ross said. "A dry cleaners, a restaurant, a bar. We'd take anything where people go to be part of a community."

Alcairo, who grew up in Visitacion Valley and now lives a few blocks off Mission, said his store does serve a community - law-abiding citizens and military and law enforcement personnel who don't want to have to drive down Highway 101 to buy a gun.

"At any given moment, there's three law enforcement personnel on the premises, whether they're in uniform or out," Alcairo said of his clientele. "If anything, we're bringing cops into the neighborhood."

Gun initiative

San Francisco voters made clear their antipathy toward guns in 2005, when they approved a measure to ban the sale or possession of handguns within city limits. Stores such as High Bridge Arms would have been grandfathered in, but the initiative never took effect before the courts threw it out.

Despite those election results, Alcairo said he was surprised to find that so many of his neighbors thought his gun store attracted crime.

"I've never had anyone who opposed our shop walk in and introduce themselves to me," he said. "It's not like I'm doing something morally objectionable or unconstitutional."

Zoning issue

Ross said she views the High Bridge Arms permit as an issue over zoning rules rather than Second Amendment concerns.

"Aside from being opposed to a gun store, we don't really think a gun store supports the neighborhood," she said. "Now we finally have an opportunity to say guns don't belong in the neighborhood. He can do it, there's no doubt. But it would be nice for him not to be there anymore."

At a hearing today, police permit officers can approve the store's request to resume selling guns, deny it, or send the matter to Police Chief George Gascón for review. The chief could refer it to the Board of Supervisors.

Campos: thumbs-down

Supervisor David Campos, who represents the neighborhood, said he respects Alcairo's point of view.

But he also agrees with Ross that he'd rather not see a gun shop in the Mission.

"Every community needs to decide for itself what makes sense," Campos said. "And what I hear from a lot of people is, they would rather not have this business here. The fact that it's been there for a while doesn't mean that it's the right thing for the community today."