Tuscaloosa Gun Store to Remain Open After Vote Against Revoking Business License

A local gun store will remain open after the Tuscaloosa City Council voted against revoking its business license on Tuesday.

As the Thread has previously reported, Guns and Ammo on Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa has been open for almost 15 years.

The owner, Josh Wakefield, and one of his employees were both arrested in August over alleged violations of the municipal code governing how secondhand stores that buy and sell goods must operate. In the aftermath, the city is also weighing whether to revoke his business license.

In an interview with the Thread last month, Wakefield said the arrests and the revocation hearing were retaliation over bad blood with a Tuscaloosa Police Department investigator who'd visited the store several times this summer.

Get our free mobile app

During a more than hour-long hearing Tuesday night, Assistant City Attorney Hudson Cheshire outlined the case from TPD and the city's revenue department to shut down Guns and Ammo.

He accused Wakefield and a store employee of routinely violating rules governing the store's operation. He included a 2016 letter from Wakefield's attorney that challenged the legitimacy of such laws, a matter that had to be settled by Alabama's attorney general.

At the core of the situation is a joint federal and TPD investigation into Christopher Collins, a felon who has pleaded guilty to armed robbery and is legally barred from owning firearms.

Collins has reportedly sold five guns to the store during separate visits beginning in March and as recently as early August.

Apparently, at least one of the firearms they bought was one of many that had been reported stolen from hunting camps in neighboring counties. When they submitted info about the gun to a third-party site that checks against reports of stolen items, a hit drew a TPD investigator, accompanied by an FBI agent, to the Tuscaloosa gun store on at least three occasions in July and early August.

On one of those visits, TPD reportedly told a Guns and Ammo employee that Collins was a felon and could not possess the firearms he was selling them, and five days later, the store allegedly bought another from him.

The ongoing case brought the TPD investigator and FBI agent back to the store on August 7th, where an employee, Rex Piggot, attempted to have them trespassed from the property and was laughed at by the police dispatcher he called.

When it became clear that TPD would not send an officer to address a complaint involving one of their own, the Piggot resumed cooperation and produced a long gun that Collins had sold to them for the police to inspect.

They then requested indoor and outdoor surveillance footage showing the time of the sale in question. Piggot told them only Wakefield - the store's owner - could access the cloud storage where clips from shop cameras are saved. There is no physical DVR or tape machine in the shop.

The officers told the employee that they were trying to be nice, but if they had to leave for a search warrant, they would stop being nice.

Wakefield said he was in the pool that afternoon and didn't hear his phone ring as Piggot tried to call him so he could share the requested footage with the police. The TPD investigator also did not answer or return a call from Wakefield on the evening of August 7th.

Although Wakefield emailed the footage in question to TPD on August 8th, his store was raided the same day by more than a dozen officers with a search warrant.

No stolen guns were recovered, but TPD seized 26 firearms from the store and ultimately arrested both Wakefield and his part-time employee, Rex Piggot.

Neither man is accused of violating state or federal law; instead, they are charged with 26 total violations each of Tuscaloosa municipal code. 21 counts each accused the Wakefield and Piggot of failing to upload required photographs of individuals who sell them guns, and another five counts accused them of selling firearms less than 10 days after buying them.

Wakefield and his attorney, Josh Swords, challenged the legitimacy of those charges, though - all 21 photos reportedly exist, they simply were not uploaded correctly, and the store owner is willing to turn them over to TPD. As for the five guns sold before they were allowed to be, Wakefield told the Thread that evidence will show all five guns were stored on-site and were being held on layaway until the required time passed - none had actually been sold or left the building.

Wakefield and Swords described the charges as over bad bookkeeping, which the city's attorney, Cheshire, took issue with.

"We're asking you to revoke Mr. Wakefield's business license not just because he's a bad bookkeeper but because the whole way he operates his business jeopardizes public safety and he couldn't care less," Cheshire said.

The investigator, Jeffrey Curvin, and TPD Chief Brent Blankley also spoke at the meeting to share information about the case and call for the store to be closed.

"He is choosing not to comply with those ordinances. It has nothing to do with bad bookkeeping, and I believe the amount of violations shows that, and I don't understand how the council can not revoke his business license," Blankley said. "It is a public safety nuisance, and unfortunately, I believe his business license needs to go."

In their own 30-minute presentation, Swords and Wakefield said he was a responsible and deliberate store owner who has sold more than 42,000 guns worth almost $9 million and generated nearly a quarter of a million dollars in sales tax revenue in that pursuit.

They were also backed by more than a dozen speakers who used the public hearing to describe their friendships with Wakefield and experiences in the store - every speaker was against the revocation.

Swords noted that TPD examined more than 400 guns during their search and found zero that were reported stolen - a feat for any secondhand dealer in the region.

"Our evidence shows that there is no way that Guns and Ammo, with the allegations brought by the city attorney by and through the Tuscaloosa Police Department, rises to the level of being a question of public safety or a nuisance for the city," Swords said. "I ask you to weigh tonight whether the actions of Mr. Wakefield determine that his license should be revoked, and I say they don't. I say [the city] has not presented any evidence that would show him to be a danger to our community. In fact, I think we've shown that he is fine, upstanding, and the kind of gun business we want."

A split city council sided with Wakefield and Swords in a 4-2 vote to not revoke the license at Guns and Ammo. Councilors Joe Eatmon and Raevan Howard voted yes. Norman Crow, Lee Busby, Kip Tyner and John Faile voted against the revocation. Councilman Cassius Lanier attended the meeting but stepped out of the room to take a phone call and had not returned when the roll was called, but because of how the other votes fell, only six were necessary.

As soon as the vote concluded, the council adjourned the meeting, and the crowd at City Hall began to disperse.

For more coverage of news in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.