The San Francisco government is not the only source of policy in San Francisco. If the San Francisco government wanted to implement strict gun control like they have in Tokyo, for example, they would be blocked by the Supreme Court judges elected by the rest of the country.

> Supreme Court judges elected

Not how that works.

I'm well aware of how it works. The country votes into office the politicians who nominate and vote for the Supreme Court judges.

If I was being more careful I could have written the country "indirectly elects" the Supreme Court judges. My basic point still stands, San Francisco policy is in many ways set by the entire country.

Err, SF had strict gun control for years. Getting carry permit in the whole Bay Area has been mostly a "who do you know" thing. Recent SCOTUS decisions made that approach theoretically illegal, but in practice the city is still requires long procedure to get a permit, and is not very generous with permits:

So far the city is processing 72 applications, and they expect to get nearly 100 to 200 more over the next year. Which is very different from the four we processed in the past 10 or so years

Source: https://californiaglobe.com/articles/san-francisco-begins-is...

Certainly 100 permits a year are not going to change things much and definitely four issued in the last 10 years didn't, and if anything sounds like "strict gun control", then four people allowed to carry in 10 years is it.

Some public policy can't be effectively implemented on the local level. Tokyo's gun control is it's nation's gun control.