Scott is replacing Max Carter-Oberstone, who was ousted by the San Francisco City Council this week at the urging of Lurie, who won election last year while running as a "moderate" Democrat who promised to bring "common sense" and "apolitical" views to City Hall. Instead of delivering on that promise, Lurie has instead picked someone with no law enforcement experience whatsoever, but one who brings decades of work as an anti-gun activist to the job. 

Scott has considerable expertise in community organizing around gun violence. She has pushed for reinvestigations into homicide cold cases and supported gun buy-back programs, accountability for irresponsible gun sellers and dealers, and community violence intervention programs. 

What Scott does not have, at least according to several Black community advocates who backed the ousted Carter-Oberstone, is specific expertise in police departments and how they function. 

“Given the qualifications of the two people, there’s a vast difference,” said Cheryl Thornton, co-chair of the Harriet Tubman African American Democratic Club. “I don’t see the legal background or the labor background.” 

No, but she does have an extensive background in gun control advocacy, which apparently is far more important to the mayor than picking a candidate with any actual law enforcement experience. Scott is currently the president of the California chapter of the gun control group Brady; a role that sprang from the shooting death of her youngest son in 1996. 

I'm a father who's grieved and been forever changed by the death of my oldest son, and I sympathize with Scott. But tragedy doesn't equal expertise, and Scott's focus on fighting crime by infringing on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Californians is deeply disturbing considering her new role as San Francisco's police commissioner. In fact, at this point it's unclear whether Lurie will force Scott to resign her role with the gun control group or allow her to pull double duty as the city's top cop and the state's most powerful and connected anti-gun activist. 

As the website The 19th reported last year, Scott was "instrumental" in shaping the gun control views of Kamala Harris, who infamously backed a complete ban on handguns in San Francisco in 2005 and boasted about sending police into the locked homes of gun owners to investigate how their firearms were being stored while serving as the city's District Attorney. According to The 19th, Scott continued to have a major influence on Harris during her tenure as vice president.

Stefanie Feldman, the [White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention] director and a longtime staffer for President Joe Biden, said that one of the first things she was told by Harris’ team was, “You have to meet with Mattie.” Scott, she was told, was critical in understanding the way in which Harris approached this issue.

Feldman said that over the past year, she has now spoken to Mattie Scott “many times.”

On the one hand, it's not like San Francisco has been known as a bastion of support for the Second Amendment in the past, so one could argue that Scott's appointment doesn't really change the status quo. It's one thing, however, to have a police commissioner who'll actively enforce all of the state and local laws on the books, regardless of their constitutionality. It's another thing entirely to have a police commissioner who's life's work has been dedicated to fighting violence by restricting our fundamental right to keep and bear arms. 

“I’m appalled,” said Paulette Brown, who has attended police commission meetings since her son was shot and killed in 2006. Brown, who also spoke at the rally in support of Carter-Oberstone, said she rarely saw Scott attend the meetings. 

On Wednesday evening, Scott was seated at the end of the first row of chairs set up in City Hall for San Francisco’s Black History Month Closing Ceremony, attendees said. 

In front of the standing-room-only crowd gathered around City Hall’s marble staircase, Lurie presented Scott with a certificate of honor for her advocacy work. 

Scott, in her acceptance speech, thanked Lurie and other city officials for their love and support of her advocacy. She also recognized the female leaders who had come before her.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” she told the crowd. “It’s about all of us and none of us”.

Yeah, "none of us" being able to exercise our Second Amendment rights. Lurie's defeat of London Breed last November was seen at the time as a shift to the right by the uber-progressive voters of San Francisco, but his appointment of Mattie Scott as police commissioner is proof that Lurie isn't the moderate he claimed to be on the campaign trail... and a sign that Second Amendment advocates are likely to be very busy in the coming months challenging the anti-2A edicts that will be coming from Scott's new position of power.