Santa Clara County supervisors voted Tuesday to explore banning gun shows from the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, citing concerns over firearm violence in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting massacre.

The board voted 5-0 to have the county’s legal department research a possible ordinance that would ban possession or sale of firearms on county owned or leased property.

“It seems like these mass shootings are happening way too frequently,” Supervisor Ken Yeager said in his proposal to the board, noting that the Florida shooting came just days after the county hosted a gun show at the fairgrounds. “I received a number of calls from residents who were very distressed we were making a connection between gun shows and the county fairgrounds.”

A law firm representing the National Rifle Association of America and the California Rifle and Pistol Association, which sponsored the county’s most recent gun show Feb. 10 and 11, wrote in a letter to the board that the move would be a needless infringement on residents’ rights.

“To date, we are unaware of a single instance of violence or injury occurring at a gun show on Santa Clara County property,” attorney Matthew D. Cubeiro of Long Beach firm Michel and Associates wrote. “Considering the aforementioned restrictions, there is no ‘gun show loophole’

in California because the transfer of a firearm is prohibited from occurring at a gun show. As a result, any argument that California gun shows are under-regulated lacks any factual support and is without merit.”

Different from many other states, California requires gun dealers at gun shows to be federally licensed and buyers to wait 10 days to receive a firearm after purchase.

It was unclear how soon an ordinance or other proposal might come back to the board for a vote. Some board members suggested it be discussed at a summit on gun violence prevention that Supervisor Dave Cortese has proposed for next month.

Though the board unanimously approved exploration of the gun show ban, members cited a number of concerns. One was whether it would affect the county’s Field Sports Park on Malech Road in San Jose, the county’s only publicly owned firing range. It includes a 200-yard rifle and pistol range as well as stations for trap and skeet shooting with shotguns.

“That in my opinion encourages people to go to a safe place to practice with their firearms,” Cortese said. He also raised concerns about an ordinance that would limit the county’s ability to host gun buy-backs aimed at reducing the number of firearms in private possession.

“One was at Reid-Hillview Airport, where possession and sale actually occurred on county property, but in a good way,” Cortese said.

Residents who wrote or spoke about the proposal since Yeager announced it Friday had mixed responses about the proposed gun show ban, including the 17 people who spoke to the board at Tuesday’s meeting. Students from Prospect High School showed up at the meeting to encourage a ban on the shows. One military veteran said the gun shows were informative.

Kristin Link of the First Congregational Church of San Jose told the board that Yeager’s proposed gun show ban is “a step toward safety and sanity for our children and our nation.”

But Mark W.A. Hinkle, an official with the local Libertarian Party who told the board he once used a gun to make a citizen’s arrest of a thief, said “banning it never solves anything.”

“People think if you ban guns, gun violence will disappear,” Hinkle said. “How did that work for the drug ban and alcohol prohibition?”

It’s not the first time Santa Clara and other Bay Area counties have tried to ban gun shows. In the late 1990s, the Santa Clara County board tried to shut them down with a fairgrounds lease amendment.

But in 1997, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled that effort, citing First Amendment protections for commercial speech. The decision, however, left open the possibility of restricting gun sales more broadly on all county property.

In 2012, after a long-running court battle, the Ninth Circuit upheld an Alameda County gun show restriction with provisions the court called “reasonable” such as requiring guns to be tethered to display tables by a sturdy cable.

The proposed Santa Clara County gun show ban comes amid ongoing efforts to rethink the fairgrounds, which occupy more than 100 acres in central San Jose that critics say are underused. Suggestions for a fairgrounds overhaul have included using some of the land for affordable housing or sports fields.

Related Articles Gun show ban proposed for Santa Clara County fairgrounds Steve Stagnaro, marketing director for the fairgrounds’ management, said the organization will follow the supervisors’ direction and that losing a couple gun shows a year wouldn’t be a financial pinch.

The county hosts two gun shows a year, Yeager said, and the most recent one generated about $6,000 in revenue for the county.