Alameda County gun ban sent to arbitration ALAMEDA COUNTY

Nearly 13 years after Alameda County outlawed private gun possession on the county fairgrounds in Pleasanton, a federal appeals court said Wednesday that gun shows might resume if promoters and the county can agree on safety measures.

County supervisors prohibited guns on all county property, including the fairgrounds, a year after a July 1998 melee at the fair in which shots were fired and 16 people were injured.

Gun-show operators immediately filed suit. They gained encouragement when the Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that the Constitution's Second Amendment allows possession of guns in the home for self-defense. The court also said guns could be banned in "sensitive places," an exception that judges have cited in upholding the fairgrounds ban in rulings so far.

At a March 19 hearing, however, a lawyer for the county said the prohibition isn't absolute because the ordinance was amended shortly after it passed to allow gun possession at the fairgrounds if the weapon remains under the seller's control - for example, attached to the table by a tether or cable. Former gun-show sponsors have objected to those restrictions and have not returned to the fairgrounds.

On Wednesday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued an order by a 9-2 vote, telling both sides to meet with a mediator and try to agree on "conditions for holding gun shows" at the fairgrounds. The court said it would put the case on hold during the negotiations.

Lawyers for both sides said they are willing to talk, although the attorney for two former gun-show promoters said they also want the county to lift its ban on ammunition at the fairgrounds.

"Ammunition is to guns what ink is to paper," said the lawyer, Donald Kilmer. Apart from that, he said, it might be possible to resume gun shows under the county's security requirements as long as a prospective buyer was able to pick up an unloaded weapon from the table and see if it worked.

Sayre Weaver, a lawyer for the county, said the ammunition ban is a separate part of the ordinance and has never been challenged in the long-running lawsuit. "We're interested in hearing what they offer for public safety," she said.