A group of firearms dealers, local residents and gun rights organizations, including the NRA, have filed a federal lawsuit against a host of Bay Area public officials demanding that gun stores — ordered closed as non-essential businesses under the region’s shelter-in-place orders to slow the spread of COVID-19 — be allowed to reopen immediately.

Filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for Northern California, the lawsuit is centered on the claim that the shuttering of gun stores by Bay Area counties is a violation of Second Amendment rights. It came on the same day that a six-county Bay Area coalition extended the regional stay-at-home order to May 3, in which gun stores were again not classified as essential businesses like grocery stores and banks, which are allowed to remain open.

Trump Administration also issued over the weekend a non-binding advisory calling gun dealers an essential business that should be allowed to stay open during the national emergency.

“California’s local governments cannot simply suspend the Constitution. Authorities may not, by decree or otherwise, enact and/or enforce a suspension or deprivation of constitutional liberties,” the suit reads. “And they certainly may not use a public health crisis as political cover to impose bans and restrictions on rights they do not like.”

A spokesman for Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern, who was named in the suit, offered a sharp retort to its claims Wednesday.

Closing the gun stores “was never a Second Amendment issue, this was an issue of public health,” Sgt. Ray Kelly wrote in an email. The sheriff’s office closed down a Castro Valley gun store last month after finding people lined up to buy guns as the coronavirus crisis worsened.

“The business was not assisting in the fight against COVID-19 and was actually making the problem worse,” Kelly wrote. “We are in unprecedented times in this fight and business as usual at the gun store was a danger to public health.”

Other defendants either declined comment or did not immediately respond to messages.

The suit also came a day after Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva reversed course on closing stores there, rescinding an order from last week that forced firearms dealers to shut down operations. In doing so, he cited the Trump Administration’s advisory regarding the status of gun stores during the pandemic.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Villanueva called the advisory “persuasive given its national scope.” The local lawsuit cites the same advisory in its argument.

Early on during the Bay Area’s regional shelter-in-place order that went into effect March 17, a San Jose gun shop was ordered to cease operating on the grounds it was not an essential business exempted from the order.

On March 23, City Arms in Pacifica was ordered to shut down, and on March 25, City Arms East in Pleasant Hill was ordered to do the same. Monday, Eddy’s Shooting Sports in Mountain View was ordered to close in accordance with the order.

The owners of these last three businesses and private citizens from Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties are the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and are joined by the National Rifle Association, California Gun Rights Foundation, Second Amendment Foundation, California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees and the Firearms Policy Coalition.

The defendants are Alameda, Contra Costa and San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, along with their sheriffs and public health officers; the cities of San Jose, Mountain View, Pacifica and Pleasant Hill, along with their police chiefs; San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo; and Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen.

Liccardo was singled out in the suit in part because of a statement he gave to this news organization in which he said explicitly that gun stores were non-essential under the stay-at-home order, and added, “We are having panic buying right now for food. The one thing we cannot have is panic buying of guns.”

Four days after the Bay Area order was issued, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide shelter-in-place order which allowed individual counties to enforce more restrictive measures if they chose. When a conflict arose in Los Angeles County over gun shop designations, Newsom said individual counties and sheriffs would have to decide the matter.

Newsom and Villanueva, the L.A. sheriff, were sued by the NRA last week in Los Angeles federal court over the issue. Separately, Ventura County was also sued in federal court. by a lone resident over the closure of gun stores there under a similar shelter-in-place

Like Villanueva, several Bay Area officials said their motivation in closing the stores stemmed from concerns that there could be a run on guns as the coronavirus crisis worsens. Gun sales nationally have spiked during the crisis.

“Law enforcement is well prepared to handle any issues. People don’t need to stock up on guns,” Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia said last week.

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