Los Angeles County’s sheriff on Tuesday had initially urged all gun stores on Tuesday to close this week and threatened enforcement, calling such businesses “non-essential” amid the coronavirus outbreak.

But by the evening, after the top lawyer for the county expressed an opposing view, arguing those shops should be open, Sheriff Alex Villanueva reversed his stance, deciding to suspend enforcement efforts to close gun stores.

The decision to halt enforcement came after a conversation between Villanueva and county counsel, said Deputy Tracy Koerner, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department.

In a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Villanueva said his department had received complaints of gun stores remaining open, and that he planned to enforce closing those stores, along with “non-essential” businesses, such as bars, night clubs, and strip clubs, which he said was in line with the county and state-wide measures to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

But Villanueva’s calls for gun shop closures contradicted with a statement issued by the top lawyer for the county, which said that neither L.A. county’s stay-at-home order or the executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom specifically mentioned gun shops, prompting the Los Angeles County counsel’s office to issue a statement late Tuesday saying it has “opined that gun stores qualify as essential businesses.”

The county counsel provides legal counsel to the board of supervisors and county departments.

County Counsel Mary Wickham could not immediately be reached Tuesday evening.

Villanueva said earlier that a “loophole” had allowed gun shops to stay open, and many attracted long lines of customers. Villanueva said the order was meant to keep open gun and ammunition businesses that support police departments and other security organizations.

The stay-at-home order is not a license “for everyone to be panic gun-buying or rushing to stores, which is now what we’re seeing,” Villanueva said.

He said gun shops have complied and deputies have not had to issue any citations.

Elsewhere, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said it was not offering an opinion on the state’s order and will leave it up businesses to determine if they can continue to operate safely with social distancing, said Carrie Bruan, spokeswoman for the department.

A similar autonomy was extended to store owners in San Bernardino County with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department saying its deputies will not cite gun stores that choose to remain open.

Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home order was crafted by the health department, and Villanueva said he’s working with the agency on new language. Except for grocery stores and restaurants offering take out, the county’s order issued March 20 deemed all other businesses as not essential. The new county order was issued to comply with a more expansive order by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Those non-essential businesses must close, Villanueva said. They will face citations from the county’s health department if they don’t comply.

“We’re fanning out making sure all of these businesses are complying,” he said. “Everyone has cooperated voluntarily.”

Since last week, Villanueva, who says he owns guns himself, has repeatedly said he was concerned over how many people were buying guns, only to stay cooped up at home.

“Buying guns is a bad idea,” he said March 16. “You have a lot of people now that are at home…cabin fever sets in, you’ve got a crowded environment … weapons are not a good mix.”

Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, said his organization is looking at legal action to overturn Villanueva’s decision.

“There are far more important things that the sheriff can be doing than sending uniformed officers to gun stores telling them they’re going to be shut down by force,” Paredes said. “We’ve got lots of stories from people who said, ‘I’d never thought I’d own a firearm, and now I want them more than anything in the world.’”

But Garden Grove police Lt. Carl Whitney, a spokesman for the department, echoed concerns of having new guns in homes.

“I don’t see any argument for them as an essential business,” said Whitney. He said he worries that many people, especially inexperienced gun owners, are panic buying and do not have a place to practice using their new firearms.

With children home from school, Whitney also feared the new guns would pose a risk if new gun owners did not have a safe or a place to properly store firearms.

“It is a constitutional right, but at the same time, I don’t see how going out and buying guns and ammunition is a necessity at this time during a stay-at-home order,” Whitney said.

Villanueva’s order, which he previewed in an interview with Fox 11 on Monday, led to some confusion among gun store owners.

Guns Direct in Burbank closed following the sheriff’s instructions, but reopened Tuesday afternoon after Burbank police told them the store was considered an essential business, FOXLA reported.

Many gun stores across L.A. County contacted Tuesday were already closed. The owner of The Firing Pin, a longtime gun store in Temple City in the San Gabriel Valley, said he shut down last Thursday after seeing customers line up nearly 20 deep.

Like their counterparts in the restaurant business, some gun shops said they were transitioning to take-out only, manning their stores with an employee on site to allow customers in to pick up the guns they ordered.

The Express Gun Locker in Hesperia was closed, but left a message to customers on its voicemail.

“Due to the current crisis worldwide, we have limited our hours,” the message says.

Still others said they were seeing a new surge in customers after the sheriff said he was shutting down gun stores.

Surges in gun sales typically occur during emergencies. One gun store owner said he’d seen similar runs on his store during the Y2K crisis and after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Staff writers Eric Licas and Robert Gundran contributed to this story.