The Los Angeles sheriff says gun shops are not essential businesses and he ordered them to stop selling to the public.
The move by Sheriff Alex Villanueva on Tuesday enraged Second Amendment advocates, who said they planned to challenge it in court. Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest county with 10 million residents, enacted a stay-at-home order last week requiring all nonessential businesses to close.
The sheriff says what he described as a “loophole” allowed gun shops to stay open and many attracted long lines of customers. Villanueva said the order was only meant to keep open businesses that support police departments and other security organizations.
California is under a "stay-at-home" order amid the spread of coronavirus. The order requires non-essential businesses to effectively close in order to slow the spread of the virus.