Restricting Gun Stores

In a ruling that will have gun ban elitists, NIMBY’s and anti-gun politicians around the state frothing at the mouth over the world of restrictions they can now enact, an 11-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a three-judge panel’s ruling on Teixeira v. County of Alameda. There is no logic behind the ordinance or ruling, just good old fashioned political gun control gone amuck.

At issue in the case was the 1998 Alameda County, California ordinance prohibiting new gun stores from opening within 500 feet of residentially zoned districts, schools and day-care centers, other firearm retailers and liquor stores. Special zoning restrictions such as this are common around California and other gun control states. All of this is done in the name of “public safety” but in reality, it’s only about restricting your Second Amendment rights.

Where do all these restrictions come from? They come from fringe politicians, administrators and political appointees who what to put up as many roadblocks to firearm dealers as possible and eventually eliminate them from their jurisdiction. In my own hometown, the first proposal of zoning restrictions presented by the police & zoning departments effectively eliminated EVERY SQUARE INCH of real estate in the city. It was not done by accident.

Typical of the restrictions is the 500-foot or more limits to ‘something’. The only thing more asinine or non-justifiable than this is the magical powers of the “gun free zone” sign. What does that 500-foot limit do? Absolutely nothing! If you are trying to insulate your protected areas from the dangers of firearms, consider the lowly .22 LR has a range over 1.5 miles and the longest reported sniper shot is 11,613 feet, a little over 2 miles. So what exactly does this 500-foot exclusion zone do, other than make the NIMBY’s feel good by not having a firearm dealer too close to them? Absolutely nothing except eliminating the majority of potential business sites of any county or municipality from the horrors of a legally run business that sells firearms and ammunition.

My favorite of these is the distance to liquor stores or so-called high-risk alcohol establishments; bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. What exactly is the public safety issue here? Has there ever been a case where someone got impaired, walked less than 500 feet to the local FFL (Federal Firearm Licensee), purchased a firearm and did harm to him/herself or others with it? What could be wrong with this logic, especially in a state with a 10-day waiting period? Perhaps they expect this person to remain intoxicated for 10 days and go back to pick up the firearm. Impressive as this would be, do they really expect any FFL to deliver a firearm to someone who is impaired? While I can’t imagine there isn’t a federal or state regulation against delivering a firearm to an impaired customer, I honestly can’t ever remember seeing one. Perhaps this is just too stupid of a loophole to try to fix. Besides, if they make a law against it, they wouldn’t be able to use alcohol businesses in the zoning exclusions.

Gun control politicians at all levels are quick to point out that they respect the Second Amendment — mostly because they “have to” — while simultaneously doing everything in their power to undermine it. But since they don’t want to have firearms retails in their communities, they work tirelessly to put as many location restrictions, conditional use permits, planning and zoning commission approvals, police inspections and approvals — and anything else they can dream up to make it more difficult, expensive or simply impossible for a new small business to get started.

How about allowing just one firearm dealer in your city, as one of my local anti-gun politicians suggested? There couldn’t be anything wrong with that, right? How great it is that your local politicians can create a business monopoly and deny consumers the choice or value competition brings to any market, just because they don’t like the product they sell, and of course, public safety!! But why should the firearm retailer be in a city at all? Certainly one somewhere in the county, or in another county would be enough to “respect the Second Amendment”?

Perhaps our local politicians and planners should look to our southern neighbor for inspiration. Mexico has one and ONLY ONE place to legally purchase firearms and ammunition. It is the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales operated by the Mexican military on a secure base in Mexico City. As a result of the extraordinarily tight gun control laws for legal possession, very few Mexican citizens are able to obtain the permits or travel to this one legal store to purchase them. This of course has nothing to do with criminal access to firearms, the crime rate or public safety.

So tell me again, what does restricting the number and location of firearms retailers do?

Bob

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