Ames poised to pass a bill of attainder. h/t Tam
That's my hometown. Every once and a while I wonder if I made the right decision in moving to Florida, it is stories like this that confirm my decision to get out of Iowa was the right one for me.
I don't think it's really a bill of attainder, (Tam's snark) but it's frighteningly close. The way people react and city councils respond is very close to treating gun businesses as tainted and doing all in their power to eliminate them from their jurisdictions.
Other municipalities have run into legal issues about banning JUST gun businesses in residentially zoned areas, but none in Iowa as far as I know. What happens is a court challenge to the ordinance or zoning discovers you cannot ban just a certain type of business from residential areas and that banning a garage gun shop also means you must ban all home based businesses.
A small bit of history. Ames is a fairly large city for Iowa. Yet if you wanted to buy a gun you had to leave town to do so. The closest FFL was Jacobson's Gun Center 15 miles north in Story City. There used to be an FFL on Main Street in Ames, Zimm's Sporting Goods, but constant harassment and Wal Mart undercutting their prices killed them off. In their last two years on main they were no longer an FFL because the city had made life too difficult via zoning. I got to hear the whole story from the owner when I asked why he'd moved from the large building he'd been in for decades to the tiny one he was in when I asked.
At present there's just a single storefront FFL in Ames, Jax Outdoor Gear. Selling guns is ancillary to their business and they are definitely of the Fudd focus.
Ames' hostility to gun based businesses is not new. What is new is there is a groundswell of resistance to the ordinances that ban such businesses.
So, Ames reader, where are you going to be on October 23rd? Fighting for your rights or passively observing their erosion?
UPDATE: The first comment is not from someone who lives in Ames. Oh, bitter irony; we meet again...
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I have wondered why Ames doesn't have a gun store. This background explains a lot. Not that I want to hurt Jacobson...
ReplyDeleteAnd, come to it, ISTR there was one down in Huxley once, which is about the same distance away. Don't know if it's still there.
The one in Huxley was Zimmerman's Sporting Goods. We called Mr Zimmerman, "Mr Paranoia." You had to stay where he could see what you were doing with your hands at all times and he was vocal about it.
ReplyDeleteHe was a customer service fail on pretty much every count.
He didn't stock hardly anything, but could order anything; if you were willing to wait 14-20 weeks for something that should have shipped in 6-8. I am sure that if he were still there when I left for greener pastures that the internet's speedy delivery finished him off.
He went bankrupt at least once. I went to a bankruptcy auction of his guns, if he'd had all those out on display in his shop and been friendlier he'd have gotten more traffic and business! That auction is also the source of my $600 10/22 story.
A story? Do tell!
ReplyDeleteUp in my town, other than Wal-Mart *yuck* about all we've got is a guy who operates out of a converted trailer out on the far end of town; you have to have a car to get out to where he is. Nice guy, and he's real good about helping out with stuff I've gotten from gunbroker.com and places like that, but I wish he were downtown. I may ask him why he doesn't consider moving down there.
I'll make a post out of the 10/22 story.
ReplyDelete