An attorney who wants to arrange gun transfers from his East Carson Street office is trying to void city rules on where firearms can be sold in a case that has become a cause celebre for the National Rifle Association.

"These are void regulations," attorney Peter N. Georgiades said Friday of the rules that restrict gun businesses to parts of six zoning districts in Pittsburgh, and then only with special permissions. "I'm asking for [court] recognition that they are, in fact, gone."

If the regulations were declared void, gun shops could open wherever stores are allowed -- a worry to neighborhood groups.

Mr. Georgiades presents "a unique circumstance, and I don't think you overturn the entire zoning code over a unique circumstance," said Rick Belloli, executive director of the South Side Local Development Corp.

Mr. Georgiades doesn't want to sell guns to walk-in buyers. His firm, Greystone Legal Associates, on the 2300 block of the South Side's main drag, sometimes disposes of firearms as part of estate sales or when it takes someone's property in satisfaction of a judgment.

Without a federal firearm transfer license, he has to rely on others to handle such transactions, adding to the cost and inconvenience. He'd rather do the background checks and other paperwork and arrange the shipping from his office.

Would there be guns in his office?

"It's possible, but it wouldn't be frequent," he said, adding that he can legally keep guns there now.

When Mr. Georgiades applied for the license last year, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives checked to see whether the sale of firearms at his office would comply with local zoning and found that it did not. No zoning meant no license.

Two-year-old amendments to the city code restrict firearms businesses to Downtown and certain industrial and commercial zones and keep them out of neighborhood business districts. Even where they are allowed, the business can't be less than 500 feet from schools, playgrounds, nonprofit recreation centers, drug or alcohol rehabilitation facilities, churches, synagogues, temples or gambling spots. The Zoning Board of Adjustment also must approve of the security system before a gun business can open.

"You can sell them at the top of topless mountain, and the bottom of bottomless valley," said Mr. Georgiades. "It is specifically tailored to preventing the sale of guns in the city of Pittsburgh."

Municipalities aren't allowed to use zoning rules to keep legal businesses out.

City attorney Lawrence Baumiller wrote to Mr. Georgiades in January, maintaining that the city's code is constitutional, and doesn't restrict the sale of guns.

"At bottom, the city is allowed to decide in which districts defined uses can be located," he wrote.

Two weeks later, Mr. Georgiades sued in Common Pleas Court, maintaining that the code violates state laws that preempt local governments from regulating firearms. The court should toss out the zoning rules pertaining to guns, he argued.

Allegheny County Common Pleas President Judge Joseph M. James sent the matter back to the zoning board, where it was the subject of an Oct. 2 hearing attended by a handful of people. The board has until mid-November to rule on whether he's allowed to transact gun sales on East Carson.

Mr. Georgiades said that although he is going through with the process, he's "not asking for permission from anybody. I'm telling the city, 'This is not your affair. Butt out.' "

He said he doubts that voiding the city's gun business rules would lead to a slew of gun shops in neighborhoods, noting that a hardware store on East Carson that used to sell guns shut its doors years ago.

City Councilman Bruce Kraus said that even a decade ago there was "a completely different cultural climate surrounding firearms," and a very different atmosphere on Carson Street. "The neighborhood is concerned, no doubt about it, about someone wanting to conduct gun transactions on Carson Street."

The National Rifle Association made Mr. Georgiades' case front-page news on its Web site Wednesday, calling it an attempt "to zone away your Second Amendment rights.

"It's just one of the many new ways anti-gunners are trying to obstruct, delay, tax and deny your Right to Keep and Bear Arms," the gun owners' group wrote. "The good news is that the NRA found out about this attempt, and we're fighting the anti-freedom politicians in Pittsburgh."

Mr. Georgiades said he doesn't think his case touches on the Second Amendment right to "keep and bear arms," and he isn't working with the NRA.

He has a history of fighting city hall. For seven years, he was the attorney for owners of the Garden Theater, a Central North Side adult movie house that the city took by eminent domain only after he fought it to the state Supreme Court.

The city is fighting a gun homicide surge that threatens to yield the biggest body count in 15 years. So far, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration has defended the zoning code's gun sale restrictions.

"The mayor's No. 1 priority is the safety of our neighborhoods," said mayoral spokeswoman Joanna Doven.

Mr. Ravenstahl hasn't yet joined some other Pennsylvania mayors, including Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, in pursuing local laws requiring the reporting of lost or stolen guns. He noted last month that it "does no good if Pittsburgh has a [gun] law that McKees Rocks doesn't."

The administration hasn't ruled out the possibility of backing new lost-or-stolen-gun-reporting rules, Ms. Doven said.