Gun dealers argue against store limits
Lawyers for Alameda County and would-be gun dealers dueled in a federal appeals court Wednesday over a land-use law that raised two far-reaching questions: whether a local government can restrict the location of gun stores and whether the Constitution includes a right to sell firearms.
“There’s no free-standing right to sell a gun at a store of your own,” Brian Goldman, a lawyer for the county, told an 11-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
But Donald Kilmer, attorney for the prospective gun retailers, said the right to own guns for self-defense, as recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, depends on having a place to buy them.
Kilmer said the 1998 county ordinance, which prohibits new gun stores in unincorporated areas of the county within 500 feet of a residential neighborhood, a school or another gun store, was “intended to stop new gun stores from opening.” He said his clients’ application to open a gun shop near San Leandro, 446 feet away from homes on the other side of Interstate 880, was vetoed by county supervisors because “they do not like guns.”
The county’s lawyers said 17 other cities and counties in California, including San Francisco, Oakland and Contra Costa County, regulate the locations of commercial gun dealers.
In a 2008 Supreme Court ruling declaring a constitutional right to possess firearms at home, Justice Antonin Scalia said that “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms” were “presumptively lawful,” requiring opponents to show why the laws interfered with gun ownership.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Marsha Berzon noted that there are 10 licensed gun stores in Alameda County, including one about 600 feet from the proposed site. How does the county’s restriction cause “any interference with the Second Amendment right to buy guns?” she asked Kilmer.
The nearby store doesn’t sell handguns, the lawyer replied, and it also doesn’t offer state-required safety training that his clients’ store would provide. Judge Richard Tallman said interfering with legally mandated training might be a constitutional violation, but another judge, John Owens, said the same training is available at homes of local gun owners identified by the National Rifle Association.