A gun shop that shares a fence with a Goleta daycare’s playground has become the flashpoint for a fast-moving fight over where firearms retailers can legally operate in Santa Barbara County. Goodland Guns, which sells handguns, rifles and ammunition, moved into a former 7-Eleven storefront on Hollister Avenue directly next to the Here We Grow Infant Care and Preschool Center, and enrollment at the daycare has since dropped from 14 children to 8.
The relocation, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, has infuriated families who say they had no idea a gun store was moving in until security fencing went up. Owner Dan Ashton spent more than $20,000 on an industrial-zone permitting process and hired two architects before signing a 25-year lease on the building in 2026, according to the same report. He said he searched for a new location for two years after his former landlord nearly doubled the rent at his old Old Town Goleta spot, where Goodland Guns had operated for more than a decade without a single formal complaint, according to Goleta officials cited by the Times.
A License Issued Without a Public Hearing
Goodland Guns obtained its Goleta business license on June 4, 2026, months after the daycare itself had opened, per the Times’ reporting. Under Goleta’s municipal code, licensed gun stores are classified as general retail, a designation that, as Noozhawk reported, let the shop clear city approval without triggering public notification, a conditional use permit, or discretionary planning review. The nearest Goleta Union School District elementary campus sits half a mile from the new location, and California law separately requires that handguns be kept in locked containers and that both handguns and long guns remain unloaded, but the state has no statewide mandate on how far a gun retailer must sit from a school or daycare, according to the Times.
Ashton has said he followed Goleta’s laws, and he has defended the move on other grounds too. Speaking to KEYT, he said the vacant lot he took over had suffered chronic trespassing, drug use, vandalism and public defecation right along the preschool’s property line before he arrived, and argued that the security fencing and privacy screen he installed actually improved safety at the site. The Here We Grow center opened six months before Goodland Guns received its license and is licensed for 39 children.
Parents Organize, Petition and Push Back
Here We Grow owner Heather Robbins has collected more than 2,200 signatures on a petition protesting the relocation and has said she does not expect the business to survive with only eight children still enrolled. Goleta City Councilmember Ethan Bertrand has said Goleta is a community touched by significant gun violence, a reference to the region’s history: in 2006, a former postal worker killed a former neighbor and six mail-sorting-facility employees at the Goleta processing center before turning the gun on herself, one of the deadliest workplace shootings in U.S. Postal Service history, according to Wikipedia. Elliot Rodger, who killed six UC Santa Barbara students in the 2014 Isla Vista rampage, had bought a Glock 34 semiautomatic pistol at Goleta Valley Gun and Supply in 2012, roughly a year and a half before the attack, per the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office investigative report…