ESSEX, Md. — Some in an Essex school and daycare community expressed concern after a store selling firearms opened directly across the street from it.
About 30 people at the St. Stephens Christian Academy held a demonstration against the store on Tuesday afternoon.
Nick Blitz, a military veteran, recently moved his 'BMore Tactical' store to a building on Old Eastern Ave; it's been open about three weeks.
"We do everything we can, because we want safe areas for everybody, too," Blitz told WMAR.
"I want people to know we're not here to cause a problem," he told WMAR. "That was never an issue we had. We do everything by the book."
The school and daycare's land is owned by the St. Stephens AME Church, which has been in the community for decades.
"The biggest concern, is just, a great discomfort of dropping off your child, period, across from a gun store," Dr. Christopher Burnett, the church's pastor, said in an interview.
Burnett said the school enrolls 82 students, ranging from infant to third grade. Some parents, Burnett said, warned they'd pull students over the shop's proximity.
"For a church and a school that has been serving this community for so long," Burnett continued, "when we're detrimentally affected and had no say so in what that's going to be, and that starts happening I find that to be a big problem, and I think the community would have a big problem with that as well."
Blitz told WMAR he'd done everything above-board to establish the shop, and that police are among the building's frequent customers.
"I can appreciate the concern, I really can," Blitz said. "We know guns are good and bad, you put a drunk in a car and the car becomes bad. It's doing what the person behind it is doing. But inherently the gun is not bad, I could leave a gun on the counter and it's not going to do anything."
WMAR also reached out to the local county councilmember, Todd Crandell's office, for a comment, and did not receive a reply.
