
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994                    TAG: 9406090750 
SECTION: LOCAL                     PAGE: D4    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: ASSOCIATE PRESS 
DATELINE: 940609                                 LENGTH: HAMPTON

HAMPTON BANS THE SELLING OF CONTROVERSIAL ITEMS AT GUN SHOWS

{LEAD} City Manager Robert J. O'Neill Jr. has unveiled a set of banned items for gun shows at Hampton Coliseum, including brass knuckles, racist bumper stickers and how-to books on violence.

``There were things being sold at the gun show that we just felt had no place being sold at the gun show,'' O'Neill Jr. said Wednesday.

{REST} He said the restrictions on written material may ``run the risk of First Amendment challenges'' but the city is prepared for that.

The restrictions were imposed on Gerry Mendelson, whose Portsmouth company, Southeastern Guns & Knives Ltd., leases the coliseum for between two and four gun shows annually.

The shows typically draw up to 9,000 people each and result in more than $20,000 in rent, admissions taxes and concession sales for the city. Mendelson's next show is scheduled for Sept. 10-11.

Mendelson signed O'Neill's list of special conditions attached to the lease agreement for the shows, but he stopped short of saying he supported all of them.

``I certainly agreed there should be no place for the racial stuff,'' he said.

O'Neill's conditions ban from the coliseum ``books, bumper stickers, badges, pins, clothing, other written materials or the like which are intended to be racially or ethnically offensive or which encourage the use of violence in any fashion.''

Throwing knives, brass knuckles and other small weapons also are specifically banned from the shows.

The restrictions also bar gun show patrons from bringing their own weapons to the coliseum - an effort to stop private sales in the aisles and in the parking lot.

{KEYWORDS} GUN SHOWS by CNB