San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston, a “Democratic Socialist,” is proposing legislation to prohibit retail security guards from simply unholstering a gun to protect property. He states it is “entirely unacceptable that our local law includes drawing a weapon to respond to protecting property… We need to make sure that our local law is crystal clear that a security guard cannot draw a weapon to protect property.”

A section of San Francisco’s Police Code, enacted over 40 years ago, currently prohibits any “armed guard” from drawing or exhibiting “other than in a holster [,] any handgun except in lawful response to an actual and specific threat to person and/or property.”

The flashpoint prompting this new measure is the fatal shooting of Banko Brown, an alleged shoplifter, during an altercation with a drugstore security guard, after the guard stopped Brown from leaving the store with merchandise.