Whipped Cream Difficulties

Lawrence was on me today about doing some reporting of my own on this situation; after all, the Statesman isn’t going to. (And would we really want them to, given their track record on gun issues?)

One of the reasons I haven’t done so is that Howard Nemerov is all over the story like poorly tattooed Asian MySpace dwarf slut Tia Tequila on a camera. He’s posted a followup story today. I’ll pull one key paragraph here (stuff in  [brackets] I’ve added to the quote to clarify who’s who):

According to [APD Detective T.J] Vineyard, the prior tenant, Bill Mitchell, subleased to Saxet Gun Shows. When Mitchell lost his lease, Saxet apparently approached [Andrew] Perkel [of Austin Marketplace, who subleased the space from HEB and who did the booking of events] when he took over the space previously leased by Mitchell.  Perkel, having previously rented another part of the building, said he was aware of the nuisance problem that began with Saxet and refused to lease to them.

There was another arrest at last weekend’s show, of an illegal alien attempting to purchase a firearm from an unlicensed dealer. Nemerov’s article has more details on this arrest as well.

And it looks like that arrest was the final straw for HEB and Austin Marketplace; the TGS website states they are looking for a new Austin location.

One aspect of this that should be explored is; why Austin? As far as I can tell, Saxet hasn’t had this kind of problem in San Antonio. (Saxet did move locations at the first of the year, but I’m not sure if that was just a matter of needing a larger venue; based on their websites, the San Antonio Event Center is larger than Freeman Coliseum.)

I wonder if this is why Saxet stopped doing gun shows in Austin:

Austin police said that last year, while assisting federal agents in combating the sale of guns to undocumented immigrants, they recorded a number of illegal transactions. The repeated offenses at the site — a former Sam’s Club location on North Lamar Boulevard — prompted police to refer the location to the department’s nuisance abatement unit, which works with owners to reduce the number of crimes on their properties.

Police officials said they met last week with representatives from H-E-B, which handles the lease of the property, and with Boedeker, during which they outlined recommendations for reducing crime at the site.

The suggestions included permitting only licensed gun dealers to sell firearms, providing private security to prevent parking lot gun sales and defining a process for people other than licensed dealers who want to sell a gun at the show.

Edited to add 1/21: Say Uncle was kind enough to link to this post along with posts by Howard Nemerov and Sebastian. Nemerov’s post in particular adds considerably more background than was reported in the Statesman. This statement caught my attention:

While TGS was not the promoter during last year’s investigation which led to a possible abatement proceeding

Also, this statement in Sebastian’s comments:

The “multiple arrests” that were the basis for a “nuisance” complaint were 12. Over 12 months. During which 12 gun shows were held.

(I’m aware of one arrest that got a lot of publicity at the time; a local boxer was arrested for having his girlfriend purchase a gun for him. I’ll see if I can dig out a link later. Edit: link here.)

This is why I own guns.