Anti-gun cities accused of using zoning laws to push out gun stores and limit rights

Anti-gun cities accused of using zoning laws to push out gun stores and limit rights

When journalist Cam Edwards talks about gun control, he doesn’t just look at the big, flashy bans.

On his show Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, he argues that some of the most dangerous attacks on the Second Amendment are coming in through the side door — buried in zoning codes and planning “moratoriums” that most people never read.

In his view, anti-gun local governments have figured out a new strategy.

If they can’t openly ban guns, Cam Edwards says, they’ll just make it nearly impossible to open a gun store at all.

Zoning Used As A Backdoor Gun Ban

Cam Edwards tells his audience that what’s happening in places like California is not traditional gun control on paper.

These local rules don’t say “no guns.” They don’t say you can’t carry.

Instead, they quietly target the businesses that make exercising that right possible – the federally licensed gun dealers, or FFLs.

According to Edwards, city councils are using zoning to “ice out gun stores” and “chill the exercise of our Second Amendment rights,” even while pretending it’s just neutral land-use planning.

He calls these measures “gun control laws” and, more importantly, “gun owner control laws,” because they’re designed to make it harder and harder for ordinary people to buy a firearm at all.

Marina, California Extends Its “Temporary” Moratorium

The main example Cam Edwards digs into is Marina, California.

He explains that the city council there put a so-called temporary moratorium on new gun stores, supposedly so planners could study where such shops “should” be allowed and how many ought to operate in town.

That moratorium has already been in place for months, Edwards says.

Now the council just voted to extend it for another 10 months and 15 days, pushing any possible new gun shop well into the future while they “consider” new regulations.

Cam Edwards notes that Marina only has one gun store today.

He points out that there may not even be any pending applications for additional shops, yet the city is acting as if it’s dealing with an urgent problem.

The existing store’s owner, Nanette Murphy, told local media she’s worried that new zoning rules could force her to move or make it impossible to stay where she is.

Murphy said she can understand concerns if a shop is “close to a school or a daycare in the middle of a residential area,” according to Edwards’ summary.

But Cam is blunt: he thinks even that kind of hesitation can end up helping the people who want to make gun stores as rare and restricted as possible.

He reminds listeners that many FFLs operate legally out of their homes in residential areas and says nobody should be ashamed to defend “every FFL,” not just the brick-and-mortar storefronts.

The Playbook: From Newton To Chicago

Marina, in Cam Edwards’ telling, is just one chapter in a bigger national story.

He walks through what he calls the standard playbook.

First, anti-gun activists discover someone is about to open a gun shop in town.

Then the outrage machine kicks in – parents, local activists, and sometimes officials themselves claim that kids walk by that area, or that “we just don’t want that kind of business here.”

Edwards highlights Newton, Massachusetts, as a textbook example.

There, he says, a gun dealer got permission to open a small store in a downtown area.

Once the locals found out, opponents started “raising hell” because children would walk past the storefront on their way to school.

Cam points out the irony that, according to local coverage at the time, there was already a marijuana dispensary just a couple of doors down – and parents didn’t seem to have the same level of outrage about that.

In his view, that contrast exposes what’s really going on.

The issue isn’t safety. It’s cultural hostility toward guns and gun owners.

Edwards says the Newton city attorney eventually warned that an outright ban on gun stores would almost certainly invite a lawsuit.

So the city didn’t ban them flat-out. Instead, Cam explains, they used zoning to box them into a tiny handful of industrial parcels on the edge of town, far from normal commercial foot traffic.

He then turns to Chicago, which he describes as an even more extreme case.

According to Edwards, after the McDonald Supreme Court decision, Chicago first tried to keep gun stores out entirely.

When that didn’t hold, the city rewrote its zoning in a way that made roughly 99.7% of Chicago off-limits to gun shops, leaving only a few awkward, hard-to-reach slivers of land — places you’d need to “cross a railroad track” to even access.

On paper, Cam says, that’s not a “ban.”

In practice, it might as well be.

Turning Access Into A Privilege, Not A Right

For Cam Edwards, the danger of these zoning games goes beyond any single town.

He warns that once one city successfully uses zoning to freeze gun stores out, neighboring cities can copy-paste the same ordinances.

“If you write these laws in such a way that it is logistically impossible to open up an FFL,” he asks, what stops the next town – and the next – from doing the same?

In a hostile region, like parts of the Bay Area in California, Edwards says you could end up with a de facto regional ban on gun stores, without a single law that actually says “guns are banned.”

That would force residents to drive hours to find a store in a more gun-friendly part of the state, assuming they have the time, money, and transportation to get there.

In his view, that is not what a real constitutional right is supposed to look like.

My own take is that this is exactly why process-based restrictions can be so dangerous.

You don’t have to repeal the Second Amendment to hollow it out.

You just have to make the exercise of that right so expensive, so distant, or so bureaucratic that ordinary people give up.

Edwards also reminds viewers that states like California are already layering on costly mandates for security cameras, audio recording, and long-term data retention for FFLs.

Add zoning choke points on top of that, and the message to would-be gun dealers is pretty clear:

You’re not welcome here.

Why The DOJ’s New Second Amendment Section Matters

Cam Edwards ties the zoning issue to something much bigger happening at the federal level.

He notes that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is launching a new Second Amendment section, supposedly dedicated to protecting the right to keep and bear arms.

So far, Edwards says, the DOJ has gone after some high-profile state laws – like “assault weapon” bans in Illinois and New Jersey – and has already sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over carry permit issues.

He points out that there are plenty of other abuses ripe for scrutiny, such as Santa Clara County’s sky-high costs for a permit (close to $2,000 once you add training, fees, and a mandated psychological exam) and the chronic delays and roadblocks in New York City’s licensing system.

But in Cam’s view, the new DOJ 2A section should also be watching these zoning games very closely.

He argues that when local governments “use zoning laws as a way to chill the exercise of a fundamental civil right,” that’s not just a policy disagreement – that’s a civil rights issue.

Edwards says he’d love to see local FFLs sue over these restrictions and hopes the DOJ will step in to support them instead of sitting on the sidelines.

He even floats the idea that the Justice Department should send a warning letter to the Marina, California, city council, putting them on notice that their moratorium might land them “under the DOJ’s microscope.”

Whether DOJ actually does that remains to be seen, but the point he’s making is clear.

If the federal government is serious about protecting the Second Amendment, this kind of subtle, technical suppression has to be on the radar – not just the big headline-grabbing bans.

A Bigger Pattern Of Punishing Gun Owners, Not Criminals

Later in the same episode, Cam Edwards connects this zoning issue to a broader pattern he sees in places like New York.

He talks about a repeat sex offender in New York State who, according to news reports he cites, had at least 16 prior arrests and still only received a two-year sentence for persistent sexual abuse – and didn’t even serve all of it.

Then Edwards contrasts that with cases like Dexter Taylor, who received a 10-year sentence in New York for making his own guns without the city’s permission, and Charles Foner, a doorman who used a revolver to defend himself but ended up prosecuted for possessing unregistered firearms.

Foner, Cam notes, took a plea deal and is expected to serve about five years – more than twice the time that repeat sex offender got.

For Edwards, that contrast says everything about the priorities of anti-gun jurisdictions.

Violent criminals get revolving doors.

Non-violent gun owners get the book thrown at them.

And zoning out gun stores fits neatly into that same pattern – it doesn’t touch the people who are already breaking the law.

It just makes life harder for the people trying to follow it.

From a rights perspective, that’s the real danger Cam Edwards is warning about.

You don’t have to say “the right to keep and bear arms shall be infringed” out loud.

You can just quietly zone that right out of existence, one city at a time – unless somebody is willing to push back.