Gun show promoters Russell and Sallie Nordyke, of Willows, California, operate the gun show company TS Trade Shows. They began presenting gun shows at California’s Alameda County fair in 1991. But in 1999, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors passed a bill banning firearm possession on county property—which effectively nixed the Nordyke’s gun shows, too.
Recently, the Nordyke’s were in court, asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn past rulings which upheld the county’s no guns position.
As CBS5, in San Francisco reported, “The Nordykes sued the county in federal court in San Francisco in 1999…The case has already been to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in 2002 that the county measure was not pre-empted by state law…In 2003, the 9th Circuit said the ban didn't violate the Second Amendment, because, according to the court, the amendment protected only a collective state right and not an individual right to bear arms.”
But that last ruling came before last year’s Heller case, “in which the U.S. Supreme Court said…that the Second Amendment applies to individuals. The ruling…struck down a Washington, D.C., ban on handgun possession. The Nordykes say the Heller decision means the Alameda County law should also be overturned.”
Said the Nordyke’s attorney Donald Kilmer, “We are asking to be allowed to hold the traditionally law-abiding gun shows held in the country fair for 10 years.”
