Judge Suspends County Gun Show Ban

A federal judge granted an injunction to promoters of the nation’s largest gun show Friday, temporarily suspending Los Angeles County’s landmark ordinance banning gun sales on fairgrounds and other county property.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Paez ruled that attorneys for Great Western Shows Inc. had made enough of a legal case to justify suspending enforcement of the new law until constitutional and other issues could be resolved in a trial.

Attorneys for Great Western, which runs three or four shows a year at the Pomona Fairplex, argued during Friday’s hearing that their client would have suffered irreparable financial damage if gun dealers had been prevented from selling their wares at a three-day show beginning Oct. 29.

The ruling means the gun show will have at least one more run before the legality of the county ordinance is tested in court.

At issue is the controversial law passed Aug. 25 by the Board of Supervisors on a 3-2 vote. Drafted to cover gun sales on all county property, the ordinance was specifically aimed at Great Western and the firm’s giant arms bazaars. The county owns the fairgrounds and rents it to Fairplex on a long-term lease.

Going into the hearing hoping their ordinance might become a model for other government agencies that want to stop gun shows at state and county fairgrounds, county officials left the courthouse scrambling to defend the law.

“We believe the Board of Supervisors is on valid legal ground,” said County Counsel Lloyd W. Pellman, who attended Friday’s hearing and vowed to appeal Paez’s decision.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who wrote the law, said he considered the ruling a setback but not a defeat because Paez did not rule on any of the major constitutional issues.

“We’re disappointed but not surprised,” said Yaroslavsky, who knew going into the hearing that the county was operating on difficult legal grounds because of state and federal laws allowing gun sales. “We crafted this law as carefully as it could be crafted.

“We think we have the right to decide whether guns and ammunition will be sold on our property and whether the county will profit by the sale of guns and ammunition on our property,” he said.

But opponents claimed their gun show was offered up as a sacrificial lamb in the wake of the vicious attack on the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills. The ordinance was passed two weeks after a man identified as white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon, wounding five people.

Chad Seger, manager of Great Western, called the ordinance “political grandstanding.”

“The ruling is absolutely considered a victory,” said Seger, whose firm this year put on gun shows in May and July, and plans another at Christmastime in addition to the one later this month. “The county’s ordinance is so over-broad: It bans sales of antique Civil War firearms that would never be used in a crime.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who voted against the ordinance, called Paez’s ruling a defeat for “the ‘politically correct’ agenda” and added in a written statement that the entire affair is “a waste of taxpayers’ dollars.”

In granting the preliminary injunction, Paez avoided ruling on constitutional issues but said attorneys for Great Western had raised “substantial questions” about whether the county ordinance clashed with state law.

The state, Paez noted, “has authorized the sale of firearms at gun shows.”

During the hearing, attorneys for Great Western also raised 1st Amendment questions.

Gun show attorney Michael F. Wright argued that the county ordinance was drafted in such a way that both buyers and sellers, in negotiating a gun sale, would not know when they crossed the line from legality to illegality.

Under the ordinance, gun dealers could display weapons, put prices on them, even barter with customers--in short, do just about everything except accept cash for them or fill out legal forms that begin the mandatory waiting period on gun purchases. Wright said it would just be a matter of time before an overzealous law enforcement officer overheard such a conversation and decided a sale had taken place.

Paez also questioned why, after 22 years of regular gun shows at the Pomona fairgrounds, the county wanted to shut down the shows without giving the promoters their day in court. He said he found no compelling reason to stop the upcoming show.

The judge said he will make the case a priority and hopes to have it decided before the next gun show in December.