NJ Parents Freaking Over Gun Store Opening Near School

AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

If your kids walk to school, I understand there being some concern over certain businesses being in close proximity to those schools. Bars and liquor stores, for example, might correspond to drunk driving and if they’re close to the school, a kid might be injured or killed by such a driver, as just one example.

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With something like a liquor store, the problems can also take the form of Junior paying someone to go in and buy alcohol for them. It’s how a lot of my peers got beer back in the day.

Yet in New Jersey, some parents are upset over a completely different business opening up.

There is a debate in a New Jersey community after a gun store opened near an elementary school.

To be clear, this isn’t a question about whether the gun shop is legal. The owner went through all the proper channels to open. It’s more a question some parents are raising about optics — and what’s really best for a school community.

If you want to make moms and dads feel more comfortable in uncertain and often scary times, opening a gun shop a few hundred feet from where several hundred young children attend school might not be the way to go.

“Overall, I think it’s a terrible idea,” parent David Miller told CBS2’s Jessica Layton.

Miller said he wonders what the council and Mayor Mark Zinna were thinking allowing a building full of weapons on the same block as his two kids’ elementary school in Tenafly.

“I don’t think it’s a great idea. I really think the kids need an environment of safety. This is not an issue of rights. It’s just a proximity issue,” Miller said.

No, it’s not a proximity issue because there’s absolutely no correlation between gun stores and violence.

I know it can be difficult for anti-Second Amendment types in an anti-Second Amendment state to grasp, but the existence of a gun store in an area doesn’t lead to violence. And really, why would it?

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Gun stores don’t sell guns to children. They don’t sell them to people who can’t pass a NICS check, either. Those people don’t go out into the parking lot, load up the gun, and just start shooting up the neighborhood, either.

Seriously, this is a non-issue that a bunch of snowflake parents who are quivering in their boots over the fact that guns exist and their precious child might be within five miles of someone who has one that isn’t a police officer.

If they were really concerned, they might have considered arming themselves with some statistics to bring to the fight. Of course, if they had, they’d have seen there aren’t any supporting any claim they’re making.

That’s because it’s not a proximity issue as Miller claims. It’s simply the fact that people are going to be able to conduct a lawful activity with no associated risks to the community and these parents just can’t deal with it.

Well, they should get over themselves for a change and recognize that the world doesn’t revolve around them and their panty-wetting phobias about the private ownership of firearms.

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