Newsom vows to go head to head with NRA and gun lobby in protecting city's gun laws

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom: Getty Images PhotoLess than 24 hours after the U.S. Supreme Court largely gutted Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he will be implementing new anti-gun programs in a continuing effort to reduce gun violence in the city.

Newsom made the announcement flanked by Police Chief Heather Fong and District Attorney Kamala Harris. These new initiatives are in addition to legislation Mayor Newsom forwarded in summer 2007 to reduce gun violence in San Francisco.

"We don't need to anticipate the location of future offenses to reduce gun violence," Newsom said in a statement. "We need to get illegal firearms off the streets now and these efforts will help us do just that."

The new initiatives include:

• Creation of a program that rewards anonymous callers who supply authorities with credible information leading to the arrest of an individual with an illegal firearm;
• Increasing by 100 percent the budget of a specialized local-federal Gun Reduction Unit whose job it is to identify gun traffickers and the methods they use to bring illegal weapons into the city;
• Beefing up the police department's homicide unit so that more cops can work a case in the critical first 24 to 48 hours of a slaying, thus improving the number of homicide arrests and convictions.
• Setting new gun seizure benchmarks for the city. Within 12 months of today (Friday's) announcement the mayor seeks a 25 percent increase in the total number of gun seizures in the city.
• Stepping up cooperation with California Highway Patrol so that law enforcement can heighten its overall profile throughout the city, especially in crime-prone neighborhoods.

Earlier in the day the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) and the National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the city's ban on handguns in city-owned public housing complexes.

"Just because someone lives in public housing does not mean that person's must surrender his or her civil rights or their right of self-defense," said the CCRKBA's Chairman Allan Gottlieb.

Newsom, however, said the lawsuit was ridiculous, and that he would use all of the city's legal resources to fight it.

While talking with KCBS earlier, Newsom posed a unique challenge to the NRA and pro-gun officials who filed the lawsuit. Listen to the mayor's comments here.