ALAMEDA COUNTY WILL FIGHT FOR THEIR ANTI-GUN ORDINANCE UNTIL THE BITTER END

By Bob Walsh

Alameda County (CA) is a large chunk of the East Bay Area, across the bay from the People’s Republic of San Francisco. They are not as psychotically liberal and as rabidly anti-gun as is S. F., but they are pretty far out there. Over the years they have managed to regulate damn near every gun store in the county out of existence and have tried very, very hard to keep any new ones from opening up. They also successfully fought off having gun shows at the County Fair Grounds for many years, though they finally lost that battle in 2012.

There is a county ordinance dating to 1998 that says you can’t put a new gun store within 500 feet of this or 1000 feet of that or half-a-mile within something else, which for practical purposes means it is impossible to site a new gun store in Alameda County. Eventually somebody filed an objection, and the courts said “NO, you can’t do that.” The county is still fighting.

A three-judge panel of the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in May that the county must provide evidence that the gun store would be a “magnet for crime” in order to justify this virtual elimination.

Last week the county asked the full court to review the matter.

The lawyer for the plaintiff’s asserts (with justification apparently) that the ordinance makes it actually impossible to open a new gun store in the county anywhere. There are now four gun stores in unincorporated Alameda County, and seven within various city limits within the county.

The current plaintiffs want to open a gun store that is 446 feet (and across the Nimitz Freeway) from the nearest residence. The plaintiffs assert that this is a constructive violation of the Second Amendment as it effectively prevents the ownership of firearms if there is no place to purchase them legally.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Those restrictions are the same as those prohibiting sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet (sometimes even less) of any parks, schools or other places where children might play or congregate, thus making it impossible for them to live any place that has enacted those restrictions.