Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Anti-gunners have had the run of Massachusetts for ages now. In fact, the state is one of the most gun controlled states in the nation, generally only behind California in their loathing of your Second Amendment rights. They don’t like them and they’ll do anything they can to inhibit people’s ability to buy them.
In a way, it’s possible that COVID-19 was something of a relief for them. After all, it gave them all the excuse they needed to completely shut down gun stores.
Of course, if they thought there would be no repercussions, they would need to think again.
Gun stores and firearms customers are suing Gov. Charlie Baker over his shutdown of firearms sales amid the coronavirus pandemic, leaving no recourse for locals to buy a gun and potentially harming small businesses.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in the federal court in Boston also names state public health and criminal justice officials and local chiefs of police for enforcing the order on April 2, denying customers pickup of guns they purchased days earlier.
“I’m a small business owner, we survive month to month,” Chris Kielty of Precision Point Firearms in Woburn told the Herald Thursday. “This industry has very small margins and profits, because we are competing with other local shops and more importantly the online industry that sells at small margins, offers free shipping and doesn’t have sales tax.”
The lawsuit also cites a “most acute” need for personal self-defense during widespread quarantines, when law enforcement may not be readily available and as criminal offenders are released from custody or less likely to be arrested.
A spokesman for Baker declined to comment, but what is there to really say?
Frankly, Kielty said is 100 percent correct. We all know it to be true. Most gun stores aren’t Bass Pro Shops. They’re more like Precision Point Firearms. They’re small businesses, Mom & Pop gun stores or pawn shops. They run on fairly tight margins and are desperate to be able to pay their bills, something they can’t do while closed.
Meanwhile, anti-gunners left and right are clamoring for these stores to close. The reason? Probably because they know the nature of gun stores as well and figure if they can shut them down for a couple of months, they won’t be able to open again. Who needs gun control if there are no stores from which to buy guns?
So yeah, Baker and company deserve to be sued and deserve to lose.
The real question is, will they? On that, I’m not so sure. Anti-gun states tend to have anti-gun judges who will likely justify this any way they want. They might cite public health concerns–nevermind that you’re more likely to contract COVID-19 at the grocery store than the gun store–or something of that sort, but in the end, I fear this will be a moot point.
That is unless this or one of the other lawsuits ends up before the Supreme Court. At that point, a right-leaning Court may have a different opinion and settle the dispute once and for all.
Really, Baker may want to reverse course on this if for no other reason than to avoid a Supreme Court decision that makes it impossible for gun store closures anywhere.
I doubt he’ll see it that way, though.
Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/04/10/gun-stores-customers-sue-governor/