After months of planning, Dustin McElroy is set to open the doors to Louisville, Kentucky's newest gun shop. The only problem? The liberal residents of The Highlands neighborhood want to shut it down.
McElroy owns and operates Madden Firearms, which has leased a space in the Bardstown Center shopping complex. You'd think the supposedly open-minded progressives who far outnumber conservatives in the community would be thrilled to have a new minority-owned business, but at a meeting on Wednesday night the overwhelming sentiment was to do something to convince McElroy to move or to get his landlord to break the lease.
“Perhaps, maybe, those concerns would reach the landlord and the owner," said Jefferson County Public Schools teacher Alexis Rich, who opposes the gun shop opening. "Reconsidering, obviously, would be the best-case scenario. But perhaps we look at different opening hours, different precautions or safety precautions or just think of thinking about this issue in a different way, hopefully after hearing from people who are going to be living within a mile of this establishment."
Rich lives three traffic lights away from the future store on Bardstown Road. FBM Properties owns the property.
“I spend a disproportionate amount of my life worrying about getting shot," Rich said. "I do. Obviously, that's always a concern at school from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and then to have that worry extended to when I go home."
That sounds like a "you" problem, Alexis, and your phobia shouldn't stand in the way of a lawful business operating "three traffic lights away" from where you live. The same neighborhood where McElroy's shop is located is home to plenty of bars and restaurants where alcohol is served. Do you think Alexis panics about the prospect of being hit by a drunk driver every time she gets behind the wheel, or has she just been so conditioned by anti-gun ideologues to fear getting shot that she ignores all of the other potential perils in the world?
Louisville Metro Councilman Ben Reno-Weber, D-District 8, said he and his team have received numerous emails and calls on the issue.
While the store is allowed to legally go ahead, Reno-Weber said that doesn't mean it should.
“I think the question is, is this appropriate? We have, as a society, decided that there are some businesses that shouldn't be near institutions that serve children, in neighborhoods,” Reno-Weber said.
Based on Reno-Weber's comments you'd think McElroy is gonna be selling AR-15s next to the slide on the playground at the local elementary school, not a shopping complex that's also home to an attorney's office, computer repair shop, and other retailers. If that's not an appropriate place for a federally licensed firearms dealer to operate, where doe Reno-Weber suggest McElroy move his business? A back alley in an industrial part of town? Or maybe just a neighborhood where white liberals don't make up a majority of residents, as is the case The Highlands?
As Reno-Weber reluctantly admitted, there's not a damn thing he or anyone else can do to stop McElroy from opening his doors and welcoming customers. Kentucky's firearm preemption law prohibits any political body other than the legislature from occupying "any part of the field of regulation of the manufacture, sale, purchase, taxation, transfer, ownership, possession, carrying, storage, or transportation of firearms, ammunition, components of firearms, components of ammunition, firearms accessories, or combination thereof."
FBM Properties, which owns the space in question, says it's been leased to McElroy (though only for four months at the moment) and McElroy has been approved by the ATF to operate at that location.
Democrats in the Kentucky legislature have introduced bills this session to repeal the state's preemption law, but that legislation is going nowhere... and hopefully the same is true for Dustin McElroy and Madden Firearms. I hope he stands his ground against the hoplophobic NIMBYs in The Highlands, and if you're in the Louisville area make plans to stop by and show him some support once Madden Firearms is officially open for business.
