Gun shows caught in the crossfire

Before the end of this year, Russell and Sallie Nordyke will set up shop for at least five gun shows at the Santa Clara County fairgrounds, providing a gathering spot for thousands of gun enthusiasts to buy and sell rifles, pistols and other weapons.

For the Glenn County couple, the South Bay is a small island amid a sea of hostility toward their TS Gun Shows. Bay Area counties from Alameda and Marin to San Mateo have enacted laws that forbid the sale or possession of guns on government property, effectively banning gun shows at some of the best spots to hold them.

The Nordykes believe those laws are unconstitutional -- and on Monday, a federal appeals court will once again take up their 12-year quest to strike down the regulations.

The case offers another crucial test of Second Amendment rights that could have repercussions for California's sweeping slate of state and local gun control laws.

Specifically, an 11-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel is to hear arguments in the Nordykes' legal challenge to Alameda County's ordinance, which has outlawed gun shows at the fairgrounds in Pleasanton since 1999.

"It has impacted our lives tremendously," Sallie Nordyke said. "We used to be able to have gun shows in a lot of other places."

With gun rights groups such as the National Rifle Association on one side and gun control advocates such as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence on the other, the Nordyke case

The most recent of those rulings, in a Chicago case two years ago, established that the Second Amendment applies to state and local gun control regulations. But it left unresolved the legal survival threshold for laws such as Alameda County's, and the 9th Circuit is expected to tackle that issue in the Nordyke case.

The outcome could determine the fate of gun show regulations in California and other states within the 9th Circuit and may also shape ongoing legal challenges to other gun controls. With the Nordyke case pending, the 9th Circuit has put on hold two cases challenging California's strict limits on carrying concealed weapons and licenses for carrying loaded firearms in public.

"This could be the next big gun case to go to the Supreme Court," said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America." "It does pose a big question: whether the right to bear arms extends outside the home."

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Gun shows caught in the crossfire