Exclusive Report: NOVA Armory Board Of Zoning Appeals Hearing

VCDL floods Arlington Zoning Board meeting to successfully defeat an attempt to pull NOVA Armory's occupancy permit on May11, 2016. [More]

The best laid schemes o' mice and mendacious mandarins were thwarted when Liberty Advocates not only showed up uninvited to their little surprise party, but dominated the festivities.

[Via Keith B]

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Here's an exclusive report from WarOnGuns Correspondent William T:

First, the hearing room was packed, with the vast majority of attendees prominently sporting one or more of VCDL's bright orange "Guns Save Lives" stickers. I did not do an official head count, but I believe that we had well in excess of 75 people in support of the store, including Philip Van Cleave. Only one person spoke for the antis and raised a number of points that I thought were frivolous (they sell Tannerite! It's a HAZARDOUS MATERIAL!!! or they claim to be a retail shop but claim to give wholesale pricing [as does every car dealer I've ever dealt with], or Dennis Pratte is a "straw owner" for his daughter, a 16 y/o minor who cannot enter into contracts or hold an FFL, or THEY DID NOT FILE FOR THEIR FFL UNTIL AFTER THEY ALREADY HAD THE CERTIFICATE OF OCCUPANCY!!!!). All of these issues had been addressed in the staff's report to the appeals board, but the presentation rehashed them anyway.

I stopped counting after more than 15 people spoke on behalf of NOVA Armory, nearly all of whom denied that the complainants spoke for them in any form or fashion. Some of the speakers invited the folks pressing the appeal to pack up and find living quarters more amenable to their vision of how a community should be organized.

In the end the board voted to deny the appeal, but not until after some distressing personal comments from various members had been entered into the record. For example, one member stated that while he found the protests ultimately unmeritorious, he did not find them frivolous, thus revealing a lack of knowledge about firearms in general and gun stores in particular [Tannerite in particular not being a hazardous material, among other things]. Another board member expressed his thoughts that while he, personally, thought that guns should be sold only by state stores as is liquor here in VA [wait ... what??????], he had no choice but to vote to deny the appeal, etc. etc.

It was a long slog - the hearing was very near the end of the meeting, so we had to sit through more than two hours of hearings about use permits, variances to allow setbacks less than called for by zoning regs, etc. (we even had one guy complain because the board was approving too many variances. All well and good that they required trees to be replaced if any destroyed by renovations, but what about the carbon foot print of larger houses? What about lost turf? What about EARTHWORMS??? [no, I am not making that up]).

So it's settled for now. Until the next round of appeals, lawsuits, or whatever else they have up their sleeve. They are already being sued civilly in connection with this nonsense [large pdf of the lawsuit attached], but I seriously doubt that they will learn from this and just let it go.