San Carlos may face lawsuit for gun store decision

But Councilman Ron Collins doesn’t expect the letter to have any effect on the effort to study how rules regulating gun shops in San Carlos could be shaped and implemented, one of the objectives of the moratorium councilmembers approved at their Nov. 13 meeting and extended for up to another 10 months and 15 days later that month. He said all of the allegations in the letter would be addressed, and maintained that the city has always followed the law and will continue to do so.

“The process is going to work itself through,” he said, adding that future public hearings, study sessions and other community gatherings to be held in the coming months are expected to inform the process gun retailers hoping to operate in the city should follow. “It allows us to have a process to figure out how we want to treat gun stores in the future.”

The council’s decision to impose the moratorium was in part a response to an outpouring of concern from hundreds of San Carlos residents about the implications of a new firearm store in the city. Citing worries about the store’s location in a mall with businesses frequented by families and the prevalence of mass shootings in recent years, dozens of San Carlos citizens weighed in on the November decisions. The council voted 4-1 to impose and extend the moratorium in November, with Vice Mayor Matt Grocott voting against the measures.

Aimed at giving officials and residents time to study rules regulating gun shops, the council’s ruling also halted the retailer’s plans to open in a mall where REI, Office Depot and Road Runner Sports have operated.

At the council’s Nov. 13 meeting, Bill Ortiz, vice president of compliance at Turner’s Outdoorsman, said the company had already taken out a 10-year lease and invested more than $125,000 to make improvements on the space after following San Carlos requirements for businesses selling guns. He went on to encourage councilmembers to think about the possibility of legal action taken by his company and the loss in city tax revenue should their decision delay the store’s opening.

“We would not go down that road and not go down that lease had we known that there was something that would be changing,” said Ortiz, at the Nov. 13 meeting.

City Manager Jeff Maltbie previously confirmed no local conditions regulating gun sales in San Carlos existed in the city before the council discussed the moratorium and its extension in November.

Collins said the letter was the first correspondence he had received from Turner’s Outdoorsman since the council’s November hearings. Though he was hesitant to predict a concrete timeline for the effort to study gun shop regulations, he mentioned the process to hire a consultant to examine rules other jurisdictions have put in place and gather input from community members could take months. Collins said he was content to let the process the council set forth last fall play out to examine the implications of stores selling guns and ammunition.

“I think they call for a little bit higher level of review and that’s really all we’re looking at,” he said.

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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