Trump Declares Gun Stores “Critical”

As NRA is actively fighting gun store closures across the country, President Trump’s newly-updated DHS guidance echoes what the NRA is arguing in court: that firearms and ammunition retailers are “critical infrastructure.”

On March 28, DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency​(“CISA”) updated its guidance on the critical infrastructure that the agency determined should remain open during state shutdown orders due to Covid-19.

The new guidance identifies the following firearms and ammunition industry workers as critical infrastructure:

“Workers supporting the operation of firearm or ammunition product manufacturers, retailers, importers, distributors, and shooting ranges.”

Several states relied on CISA’s failure to include firearms retailers in prior guidance as a reason to order those businesses to shut down.

The Free Beacon reported that New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal (D) cited the DHS guidance as support for Governor Phil Murphy’s (D) decision to completely shut off firearm transfers in the Garden State.

“The governor’s executive order tracks every other executive order that has a stay-at-home provision and none of those—none of those—contain an exemption for firearm stores and nor does the federal guidance from Homeland Security contain that type of exemption when it comes to essential facilities and nonessential facilities,” Grewal said.

NRA looks forward to a speedy reversal by New Jersey and other states who have claimed to rely on CISA’s guidelines in determining what businesses are “essential” and can therefore lawfully remain open during “shelter-in-place” orders.

Source: NRA-ILA