1. He goes along with APD's claim that no pressure was put on the venue or promoter, stating in his article that the final decision was HEB's. However by stating that there is a nuisance abatement issue and a history of criminal activity, the APD put HEB on notice that their property was in danger of being seized/shuttered under the Nuisance Abatement laws. These statements by APD are a matter of public record although not everyone who reads them understands the significance. HEB was understandably concerned and pressured the promoter as a result. From Mr. Nemerov's article: "APD gathers all interested parties together and explains the next step in the abatement process." At some point, the next step in the process is HEB's loss of property rights. The fact that HEB was actually under tremendous pressure from the APD is one that anyone, including Mr. Nemerov, could have verified with just a little research.
HEB is a $13.5 billion corporation based in Texas with 70,000 employees - and a big employer on the local Austin job market. They have lawyers and I would imagine the HEB representative probably was one.
It seems to me that Austin PD isn't going to have much luck trying to leverage HEB with a nuisance abatement claim unless there is actually a fairly well-documented case supporting the claim. Also, according to the articles, HEB is actually a lessee of the property and not the actual property owner. Austin Market is a sub-lessee of HEB and TGS is a sub-lessee of Austin Market. I'm not up on Austin's nuisance abatement laws; but I would think that the actual property owner would be the target.
So assuming we want to complain, exactly what is our complaint and who is it with?
1. Is it with ATF for showing up at the meeting and saying firearms were being sold illegally at the location? I'm no fan of ATF; but that is pretty much their job description. We can make this complaint all we want; but it isn't going anywhere unless there are other facts we haven't heard yet.
2. Is it with Austin PD for using the Nuisance Abatement team to leverage HEB? This might be a good angle; but we are missing some key details - like how good was Austin PD's leverage and how cooperative was HEB? It seems to me that without HEB also crying foul, we don't have much chance of putting any pressure on HEB since they will just say "It was HEB's decision" and HEB will say "Yes, it was."
3. Is it with HEB for kicking out TGS (or depending on who you believe insisting on the FFL sales only clause in TGS's original contract)? To me this seems the likely place to start. HEB seems to be the linchpin of the issue. If Austin PD or ATF acted inappropriately, HEB is going to be in the best position to say so. If HEB violated any contractual obligations against TGS, then that makes the case even stronger since it suggests that HEB was pressured hard enough they willingly accepted civil liability to TGS. As a bonus, pressuring HEB can be done directly without news agencies putting their spin on it (anytime somebody gets to retell your story, they might choose to focus on different aspects of the story then you do).
Which brings up another thing that is problematic about this as a gun rights issue: How do you bring pressure on any of the possible suspects (HEB, Austin PD, ATF) without public support? And how are you going to win public support if the primary narrative becomes selling guns to illegal aliens and felons with no background check? It seems to me that the way the media retells this story will have a bigger impact than what the actual story is and the media has a tasty list of options on the retelling - not all of which are in our favor.