When the city of San Francisco voted to label the National Rifle Association as “terrorists,” it upset a lot of folks. The idea of labeling someone a terrorist isn’t something to be done lightly. Further, there were absolutely no grounds for it. One would be hardpressed to find any links between the NRA and any mass shooter, much less one who was politically motivated.

The NRA filing a lawsuit wasn’t surprising.

However, the group has decided not to pursue litigation after all.

The National Rifle Association has withdrawn its lawsuit against San Francisco over the city’s resolution labeling the gun-rights group a “terrorist organization.”

Lawyers for the NRA filed a notice of dismissal Thursday in U.S. District Court of Northern California.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement that he’s pleased the organization “backed down on its frivolous lawsuit” to silence the politically liberal city.

I’d argue that it had less to do with silencing the city and more to do with the fact that calling someone a terrorist could be construed as defamation.

Of course, the resolution had no force of law. It didn’t change the way the city approached anything, really. It didn’t accomplish anything except to virtue-signal that San Francisco is a good city full of progressive robots who hate guns, something everyone already knew.

It doesn’t actually impact the NRA in any meaningful way, thankfully.

That’s why the lawsuit was dropped. Defamatory rhetoric has always been restricted, but only if it impacts another. Calling someone a racist and hurting their business, for example, enters the realm of defamatory speech…assuming, of course, it’s untrue. Just calling someone a racist, however, doesn’t. Not if no one believes it.

So, you see, the NRA’s decision to drop the lawsuit probably stemmed from one simple fact. That fact is that literally no one who mattered actually cared what the city of San Francisco thought about the National Rifle Association.

While City Attorney Dennis Herrera can call it a “frivolous lawsuit” all he wants, it only approaches that standard because the opinions of Bay Area liberals matter so little to virtually everyone outside of that part of California it literally couldn’t hurt the NRA or their operations in any measurable way.

It’s only frivolous because San Francisco is simply a city no one can take seriously.

I’m not sure I’d be particularly proud of that fact if I were Herrera.

To be sure, though, there are others who share San Francisco’s opinions about the NRA. The city isn’t the first to make such a baseless accusation, only the first to do it in such a way as to try and make it an official decree.

Frankly, I kind of hope the NRA holds their annual meeting there just to really honk the city off, but that’s just me. I have a tendency to want to troll people over stuff like this, after all, and it would be hilarious.

Regardless, the lawsuit has ended and, in truth, it’s unlikely the NRA would have won anyway. After all, as noted above, they didn’t really suffer any harm in this.

Thankfully.

Yet rest assured, San Francisco will probably not stop at pointless declarations. When that happens, there will be hell to pay, I’m sure.