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.)