“An Arlington strip mall off Lee Highway in the Cherrydale community has everything from restaurants to salons to a frame shop,” wjla.com reports. “McLean-based Nova Firearms has announced it’s opening a new store in that empty space this summer. Building owner Kostas Kapasouris says, ‘They want to have exclusive, expensive sporting goods and I guess that probably includes expensive guns.’ Kapasouris confirms a lease has been signed but he insists the community is overwhelmingly opposed to a gun shop being here . . .
He tells ABC 7 News he’s trying to figure out if he can legally break the lease. Kapasouris says, “The community is very upset and I don’t want the community to be upset.”
I imagine “the community” was upset when African-Americans decided to eat at whites-only lunch counters back in the bad old days, down south.
Back in the Old Dominion, residents opposed to free market capitalism (when it comes to legally sold firearms) are flocking to a change.org petition saying: “We are alarmed that the shop is within 2 blocks of an Arlington County Public School . . . Four additional schools are within 5 miles.”
The petition has garnered some 1600 signatures so far. Good thing Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms isn’t subject to the democratic process. Well, in theory. Anyway, Nova Firearms is sticking to its guns. So to speak. [h/t MM]
uuuhhhmmm, wouldn’t local ordinances determine if a gun store can be operated within so many feet/yards of a school property? same as a liquor store or porn shop? if the gun store owner plans to sell only within the community, sales will probably be so scarce as to make the venture untenable, anyway.
i’d bet a fair portion of those 1600 are NOT from residents
i’d say someone posted it to one of the anti gun sites and they all signed it 2 and 3 times
I signed a counter-petition. I’m a former resident, but current American. 😉
http://www.change.org/p/kostas-kapasouris-property-owner-continue-actions-to-lease-former-curves-location-to-a-gun-shop
Sadly, they are probably locals. Arlington well deserves its nickname as “The People’s Republic of Arlington.” I have Iived most of my life here as a repressed minority, a conservative gun-owner.
I am sad to hear that they are already thinking of giving up.
The supporters of this shop have started their own petition: https://www.change.org/p/kostas-kapasouris-property-owner-continue-actions-to-lease-former-curves-location-to-a-gun-shop
“An Arlington strip mall off Lee Highway in the Cherrydale community has everything from restaurants to salons to a frame shop,”
OMG! A frame shop! Near a school! OMG!
The only thing that should be near a school is a jail to spare the little b@stards from a long, spine-snapping ride.
I’d feel safer knowing that good guys with guns are closer than the local PD.
I bet they sell beer and smokes near the school too. Just saying.
You’d be right. I used to live right across the street from where that frame shop is and the gun store is going on. OMG, there are Restaurants that serve ALCOHOL right next door and Gas Station leaking toxic FUMES and ….oh I’m just having the vapors!
There are a hell of a lot more gun owners in that area then the anti-types think, I know because I had lot of them in my concealed carry permit classes.
Google map search Horsely Park Gun Shop which is in Sydney’s western suburbs.
There are sports fields directly opposite. A pub across the adjacent street. And TWO schools on the road to the east of the shop.
Problems caused by the gun shop?
ZERO!
If anything, the neighbouring shops like the passing trade.
Do they really think that if the shop was located 6 miles away, they would be 100% “safer”? WTF goes on in their heads?
I doubt any of the kids at these schools are old enough to purchase a firearm. Maybe the thought of someone seeing a firearm terrifies people so much they might die of fright?
Close.
To liberal hoplophobes, the thought of children witnessing the lawful buying and selling of firearms by ordinary, law-abiding people might make the young-uns question their parents’ sermons about guns being evil death machines that cause all the violence in the world.
You pretty much nailed it
https://www.change.org/p/trish-spencer-mayor-of-alameda-ca-alameda-ca-city-planning-board-alameda-ca-city-council-prohibit-ban-firearm-and-ammunition-sales-within-a-one-mile-radius-of-frank-otis-elementary-school-3010-fillmore-st-alameda-ca-94501-by-petition-of-the-student
OMG, the comments on that link are so ridiculous that they are funny to read. How can people be SO ignorant and susceptible to arguments that make NO common sense ? Have their politicians really succeeded in brainwashing them to that degree ? Unbelievable !
It’s a cultural suppression vote. Note the vague references to “our” values and the paper-thin excuses given as reasons. Cultural suppression movements are like that, because cultural suppression laid bare is an ugly and illiberal (in the classical sense) thing.
Yep, I agree. You nailed it dead on as to the why of this boondoggle.
OMG!! There’s a Curves in that shopping center! Fat chicks in spandex working out! Burn it down! For the children…
There really should be a law about Spandex. It should be kept in a special area of the store accessible only through an 18 inch wide doorway.
Two things that NEED a weight limit, speedos and spandex.
The ‘Curves’ failed, the gunshop is going in to replace the ‘Curves’…
But will they sell the Taurus Curve?
Only the fat version.
Can you get high capacity spandex for the Taurus Curve.
Yes, but the spandex stretches and looks like cottage cheese in a burlap sack. It’s not pretty.
Hey, Pieslapper, I happen to know a number of plus-sized ladies that happen to fancy getting their pies slapped… Just say’in…
😉
Two blocks, five miles, whatever. In Arlington, everything is a few blocks from everything else. This proximity game is getting old. I recall alarming stories recounting events (shootings, near shootings, false reports of shootings, gun stores opening, kids drawing guns with crayons) taking place “less than 168 miles from Sandy Hook” or a “mere 52 days after Aurora.” Desperation. Animals and thinking people can smell it.
There are two stores that sells guns within a two miles of like 5 schools where I live here in the SF Bay area, and no one has every minded for some reason. I guess it could be that the stores are general sporting stores that just happen to sell guns as well.
Go check out Meltzers in Garfeild NJ. one of the worst states for gun owners rights, yet they have been across the street from the high school for 100 years and nobody’s complaining.
maybe the school just doesn’t the want competition.
I was really excited that this might be in Arlington, TX since we only have a couple gun shops and a gander mountain. Once I realized that people were up in arms about a gun shop being close to a school, I realized that this could only be on the east coast.
Isn’t Virginia considered part of the South?
At one point, yes. That said, it’s close proximity to DC has changed it a lot, and not really for the better, and Arlington gets more of that influence than anywhere else in the state.
I like to call Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax County (where I live) “Yankee-occupied territory.”
Yeah, there sure are a lot of New York plates in the area too, aren’t there? I call them carpetbaggers, but yankee will do. Arlington is surely one of the most liberal areas in all of Virginia. Solid Obama territory. I have to admit it’s also a great place to people watch, especially the Clarendon area, because the cute coeds are everywhere. I do tend to get a lot of indignant head shaking and scowling from drivers there when they see my NRA Life Member sticker on the back window of my car. I’m sure if they knew what the Bolt Face Logo sticker on the back meant, it would really set them off. It makes me smile.
My family tree in Virginia goes back to the American revolution and it really saddens me to see what has become of Northern Virginia. Occasionally, when I have a little bourbon in me, I get to wishing Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia would rise from the grave and drive the liberal hoards to the other side of the Potomac. There would be a few of my ancestors in his ranks too, I am not ashamed to say.
There is NOTHING wrong with a gunstore opening near a school or even across the street from a school. It is a place of business selling a line of legal to own products that are much coveted by its customers. These businesses are regulated, unfortunately too much so at times. So long as it is not selling to students, why would anyone with an ounce of brains who does not believe in government control of their lives have an objection. Seems the only ones objecting are socialist politicitians who overreach their authority, and citizens who like to be controlled by them and dont believe in freedom.
Remember the LA riots, when the cops went into gun shops to get needed weapons?
What if a bunch of hoods with massive fire power opened up at the school, and the cops ran out of ammo and couldn’t get any quickly. How would these “responsible” citizens feel about that shit?
I don’t know about the riots, but they definitely did so in the north Hollywood shootout with the armored up bank robbers. If I recall correctly all they had were 9mm’s against the robbers AK’s. Each one took somewhere north of 100 hits each (thanks to the armor and barbiturates).
How would these “responsible” citizens feel about that shit? Who really cares? They are part of the problem.
Your right about that!
The most responsible citizens during the LA Riots were the Korean store owners who took to the rooftops of Koreatown with AR-15s, Mini-14s and other guns and drove back a violent hoard of looters who had already murdered five Korean store owners there. The Koreans reportedly fired more than 500 rounds, killed four looters, and saved their businesses and themselves.
http://humanevents.com/uploads/2012/12/58852252.jpg
The world has changed a lot since the ’90s. The way cops have tooled up in the last fifteen years, I really doubt there’s much chance they’ll run out of ammo or need to go get better weapons from a strip-mall gun store these days.
It’s more likely they’d need to hit the local gas station to re-fill the MRAP halfway through the SWAT team serving a warrant for unpaid traffic tickets.
The argument and logic is; The proximity to an object determines behavioral actions which will most likely be nefarious.
I’m sure they can “legally” break the lease, insofar as it won’t be ‘illegal’. They’ll just have to pay for the opportunity to do so.
I see some quite real issues with a gunstore being close to a school. Mainly that the store will be overrun by children in the lunch break, what cooler stuff to look at when you hva time to spare?
Unless somthing drastic have happened there are still nothing cooler than guns and fast cars.
That being said, lots of children have challenges with the term “private property”, so i see where the antis are comming from. But thats a safety risk is just absurd.
l doubt this is about proximity. In most cities, it is difficult to find a place that is not within a few blocks of a school. Usually, these kinds of claims are from anti-freedom movements who are trying to squash the 2nd amendment.
Good thing it was not a porn shop.
The liberals would rather have a porn shop there. It would be a research tool for the school’s Home and Hamily Living and/or Health classes no doubt.
Look at the comments for that change.org petition. It seems really common for signers to write “fun store” as in “i do not want a fun store here.” I’m not sure if that is a sign of astroturfing(one person who keeps making the same mistake over and over) OR if its just indicative of the mindset of those that want to restrict this business endeavor.
I laugh. Here in liberal Vancouver WA we have a high school and a surplus store separated only by the community college campus and a small park. Nobody even batted an eye when the surplus store moved in.
I happen to know of a firearms store that is less than 100 feet from a public elementary school. There’s a firearms training school technically even closer too.
Good thing Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms isn’t subject to the democratic process.
This is why I posted earlier on another subject that the USA is not really a democracy, but is at least supposed to be Constitutional Republic. A lot of times, democracies turn into the vote of the two wolves and the one lamb deciding who will be for dinner. It seems like out in California, that the farmers get to be the lamb in the battle of the water rights. In most progressive soviet socialist states, gun owners and gun stores get to be the lamb when it comes to making the community morons, er, I mean the village community feel safe.
My cousin used to work at Nova’s first location. Good folks. I bought a really nice AKMS off of them.
I’m sure their are no drug stores, liquor stores or car dealerships within 5 miles.
*there. Dirp
My favorite gun shop just happens to be across the street from a Hinds Community College, less than a 1/4 mile down the road from Pearl High School, and just blocks away from Pearl Upper Elementary and Pearl Junior High School.
WELL I liked ’em on fakebook. Yeah gun shop only a block from a grade school in my Cookco,Il town. AND a gun range-HORRORS!
One comment wanted “a ballon store” to open in the space. Toxic gas? High pressure tanks? Hey I had kds that would go not those store and inhall helium! You know how dangerous that it! What if a comet hot the store? Oh the horror. /sarc
“One comment wanted “a ballon store” to open in the space. Toxic gas? High pressure tanks? ”
Helium is non-toxic.
If Helium kills you, it’s via asphyxiation.
Can you get any more random? This is borderline proof of mental incompetence…
Why does this matter? Who is so fucked up in the head that they care how close a gun shop is to school?
Do you care how close an Automotive Service Station is to a school? Do you care how close a Home Improvement Store is to a school? Do you care how close cars are tot he school? Do you care if the wind blows a fart from my butt to your house? OMG! Will this cause global warming? How many children will be born to crack-addicted parents as a result of my left nut not being on fire right now?
There’s a Gun Shop near a School in everywhere always… What’s “near” anyway? Irresponsible parents who toss their kids to the lions to get free stuff are the problem, not gun shops and gun owners and guns, OMG THE GUNS!!!!
You can probably find kids in that school more fit to safely handle a gun than the SRO, and they probably get more practice…
I used to live a few miles away from that neighborhood. Pretty much all of Northern Virginia is full of NIMBYs who have lots of emotional reasons why they don’t want this or that in their own back yards, but never have a single logical or scientific reason why they opposed the proposed facility.
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