City relents, issues license for gun shop

Nearly three years after the City of Eureka Springs refused to allow Keeling Grubb to operate a gun store and pawn shop inside city limits, the city issued a business license to Grubb on Friday, April 17.

The move came after the state Supreme Court sided with Grubb in a majority opinion issued Jan. 15, ruling that Carroll County Circuit Judge Scott Jackson erred in denying Grubb’s appeal of the Eureka Springs City Council’s decision not to grant a Conditional Use Permit for Eureka Gun and Pawn. Jackson’s ruling came at the conclusion of a nearly four-hour hearing in May 2024.

Grubb’s attorney, Whitfield Hyman, appealed Jackson’s decision to the state’s high court.

In a concurring opinion issued along with the Supreme Court’s majority opinion, Associate Justice Nicholas Bronni wrote that “the circuit court should immediately enter a final order granting Eureka Gun’s application.”

Eureka Springs Mayor Butch Berry said the city issued the license after receiving guidance from an Arkansas Municipal League attorney.

“We were advised by the AML attorney to issue the business license,” Berry told the Times-Echo by email on Wednesday, April 22.

“I think they saw the writing on the wall,” Hyman said the same day.

Meanwhile, the legal battle between Grubb and the city remains ongoing. A hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Friday, April 24, in the Carroll County Western District Courthouse in Eureka Springs.

The Eureka Springs City Council voted twice to deny Grubb a CUP. The first council vote, in June 2023, came after the city’s planning commission was deadlocked 3-3 the previous month on whether to issue the permit.

The second, in July 2024, followed a 3-2 vote by the planning commission in favor of granting the CUP. With two vacant seats on the commission, the 3-2 vote fell short of the four votes needed for approval. The council vote, on July 8, 2024, was 4-2 against issuing the permit.

Council members David Avanzino, Susane Gruning, Steve Holifield and Harry Meyer voted not to grant Grubb a CUP, while council member Terry McClung and then-council member Autumn Slane voted in Grubb’s favor at the 2024 meeting.

“Based on the way the law is written, and that’s what we have to go on, that’s the way it’s prescribed for us to do,” McClung said at the time. “We don’t have the right to be arbitrary and base it on anything other than that. Yes, it’s true that we need to appreciate and respect what our community, our constituents say and their opinions, but if the law is not the way they want it to be, they need to change the law.”

The first council vote on the issue came on June 12, 2023, and followed nearly an hour of public comments from residents — most of whom spoke against allowing Grubb to operate the gun and pawn shop.

“While Eureka Springs has been fortunate to enjoy a relatively low crime rate, we cannot overlook the potential consequences that may arise from introducing a pawn and gun shop in our community,” Avanzino said at the June 2023 meeting.

Sixteen residents addressed the issue during public comments at that meeting, with 12 voicing opposition to issuing the permit.

Attorney Will Kellstrom, who represented Grubb at the June 2023 council meeting, told council members that Grubb intended to sell “high-end, collector-grade firearms.”

Kellstrom also addressed the public pushback.

“What I’m hearing is ‘we don’t want gun shops anywhere in this town,’ and that is arbitrary and capricious,” Kellstrom said. “And I say that being a person who does not typically come to these meetings and throw out legal jargon. I try to resolve through the code of the city and through reasonable and peaceful means.

“I’m sorry, that just wouldn’t hold up in court.”

Hyman filed suit on Grubb’s behalf in Carroll County Circuit Court in July 2023, arguing that the city council’s denial of the CUP violates several sections of the Arkansas State Constitution. Hyman also contended that the city’s decision violated Grubb’s civil rights.

Opposition to a gun shop from residents and city council members is not a legal basis for denying Grubb’s application, the complaint says.

“The City’s distaste for a certain type of lawful business is not a constitutionally legitimate basis for prohibiting the Plaintiffs from operating their business in Eureka Springs,” Hyman writes in the complaint.

In February 2024, Hyman offered to settle the suit if the city paid $16,499 in attorney’s fees and court costs and granted Grubb the CUP.

At the May 16 Circuit Court hearing, Jackson rejected Hyman’s argument that the objections of Eureka Springs residents who told the city council they were opposed to Grubb’s application “don’t matter.”

“I’m sorry, but these people’s feelings don’t matter,” Hyman said in his final arguments, at one point using a mocking tone of voice when describing a local resident’s objection to Grubb’s application. “What matters is the law.”

Jackson cited a state law in saying that the planning commission and city council can consider opposition from nearby residents in making decisions regarding permit applications.

“The people’s feelings do matter,” Jackson said.

Jackson also rejected Hyman’s argument that a section of state law that states that a city “shall not enact any ordinance or regulation pertaining to, or regulate in any other manner, the ownership, transfer, transportation, carrying, or possession of firearms, ammunition for firearms, or components of firearms, except as otherwise provided in state or federal law …” was applicable in this case.

“The court’s going to find that this statute does not affect the commerce of firearms,” Jackson said.

In a concurring opinion issued along with the Supreme Court’s majority opinion, Associate Justice Shawn Womack wrote that a “reasonable fact-finder certainly would have found that (Grubb was) entitled to a CUP; indeed, the proof strongly pointed that way.”

Womack also wrote that Jackson’s finding regarding the state law that prohibits cities from regulating the transfer of firearms was “inconsistent with basic principles of statutory interpretation.”

Grubb, who has sold guns from a shop located outside the city limits since being denied a license to do so in the city, said Wednesday, April 22, that he will have to reapply for a federal permit to sell firearms at his in-town store. Grubb also will have to file documentation with the state to operate a pawn shop.

He said simply receiving a business license does not put an end to the matter.

“Oh, no,” he said. “We’re far from it.”

Grubb estimates that his losses are in the millions. Hyman said he intends to pursue significant damages against the city.

“My goal would be to bankrupt Eureka Springs for doing this to somebody,” the attorney said. “Just the hubris of it, for three years, I think they should have to pay out enough money — I would love to get a judgment so large that we could say: ‘Look, we’ll forgive a large portion of this if you dissolve your city and and … just revert back to the county.’ ”