It's an hour before dawn, and
Espanola Jackson, a 76-year-old activist known for her leading role in antidevelopment battles, is awoken by a clunk coming from the kitchen of her house, five blocks east of
Candlestick Park. She sits up in her bed, takes a pair of keys out of her nightstand drawer, and steps softly toward her gun cabinet. While struggling with the lock, she hears footsteps growing louder.
Miles away from Jackson's
Hunters Point home, San Francisco residents
Therese Marie Pizzo and her domestic partner are on an out-of-state vacation. Two red-faced men approach them, laughing, taunting, asking menacing questions about the women's hair and clothes. Pizzo imagines reaching into her jacket to pull out a loaded pistol, but she's carrying only a pocketknife. She grabs her partner's forearm and steps back.
These scenes are fantasies. But they're based on fears described in legal complaints filed on behalf of real-life city residents Jackson and Pizzo, who are plaintiffs in separate but similar anti-gun-control lawsuits against San Francisco filed recently in federal court. Jackson is an elderly woman who keeps handguns in her home for self-defense "and other lawful purposes," according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Jackson and several co-plaintiffs, including the
National Rifle Association. Pizzo and her partner enjoy taking trips out of California; she says she applied for a concealed weapon permit to protect her against bigoted hicks, but was brushed off by the San Francisco sheriff's office. Pizzo's suit was filed by independent gun-control opponent
Gary Gorski, an attorney in
Fair Oaks.
