Ventura County Pivots in Face of Lawsuit, Orders Gun Stores Reopened

Ventura County, California, pivoted on Friday, just days before a hearing was to be held on a request for a preliminary against the county’s decision to close gun stores during the coronavirus shutdown.

The case, McDougall v. County of Ventura, was brought by Donald McDougall and Juliana Garcia, as well as the Second Amendment Foundation, the California Gun Rights Foundation, and the Firearms Policy Coalition.

The plaintiffs’ attorney Ronda N. Baldwin-Kennedy reacted to Ventura County’s decision to open gun stores:

The defendants were obviously wrong on the law and had no constitutional support for their frivolous arguments, so it makes sense for them to change course now. We are delighted that this lawsuit moved the County to issue another order so that our clients and the people of Ventura County can exercise their constitutional rights.

The plaintiffs’ co-counsel attorney Raymond DiGuiseppe said:

The facts are that the Ventura County defendants made it a crime for individuals to patronize and operate firearm and ammunition retailers, and worse, these government officials banned travel for firearms and ammunition as “non-essential”. Those are precisely the kinds of actions our Constitution was designed to protect against, so we look forward to the next phase of litigation in this lawsuit.

Second Amendment Foundation founder and executive vice president Alan Gottlieb commented, saying, “This legal action was and remains about winning firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time. The county choosing to re-open firearm and ammunition transactions rather than face our motion in court is a victory for gun owners and the Second Amendment.”

The case is McDougall v. County of Ventura, No. 2:20-cv-02927-CBM in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.