Glimmer of hope after meeting evaporates as city refuses to budge

It's official. Gun safety has been censored.

After rounds of meetings and phone calls, the city of Phoenix, perhaps prophetically on Election Day, Tue., Nov. 2, passed final judgment and decided that censorship of our bus-stop advertisements would remain final. “Educate Your Kids” with the big red “Guns Save Lives” heart, which they tore down more than a week ago, were deemed unacceptable and would stay down. They blamed CBS Outdoor with the “error” for having put them up.

WorldNetDaily columnist Jeff Knox describes it perfectly --
http://www.wnd.com/index.php/index.php?pageId=223245

We have a few options:

1. Tuck our tails between our legs, admit defeat, and promote the cause of gun safety, education and marksmanship elsewhere, denying cash-strapped Phoenix of revenue;

2. Write new ads in the hope that the city will approve of our words -- but without clear guidelines on what the city will accept, and leaving us subject to their arbitrary case-by-case decision making, with unknown delays between our submission and their decrees;

3. Sue the bastages.

The third option is only on the table because the Goldwater Institute believes this is a well-positioned case to finally challenge the Phoenix speech-restriction codes. The city's ongoing policies of speech suppression, bureaucratic control of speech, inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement, and lack of clear guidelines have attracted the attention of two other leading public-policy law firms, The Institute for Justice, and Judicial Watch. A number of private-practice attorneys have also expressed desire to join the fray. Support for action from the public has been uniformly positive -- thank you all for that.

The city claims this has nothing to do with guns, and in fact proposed a version of our ad that included the big red “Guns Save Lives” heart. But they turned the meaning of our ad literally upside down. Who do they think they are, anyway, re-writing our ad? Where does that authority come from? That version also censored every word of our text, which you can read on the bottom of our website home page http://www.trainmeaz.com.  It begins:

“In Arizona, marksmanship matters. 'The Train-Me State' knows that a nation, trained to arms, is an American linchpin of freedom, and is respected in Arizona like nowhere else. The Arizona legislature has enacted vibrant protection of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. We in Arizona seem destined to set models for the nation-in this case, a shining example of gun rights for all free peoples of the Earth.” Read the rest --
http://www.trainmeaz.com