MERRIMACK – The current segment of what a Collectible Arms & Ammo co-partner calls a rotating window display is raising hackles among some in town for its depiction of President Barack Obama as the “firearms salesman of the year” and images of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong above the statement “Gun control works: Ask the experts.”
Similar creations, in part or whole, are fairly common on posters, in gun shop windows and as website headers, but one longtime neighbor of the shop, which opened a year and a half ago in the Galaxy Gas Plaza, 557 Daniel Webster Highway, said Thursday he felt “compelled to say something” about the display.
“Truthfully, I don’t understand why a good businessman would choose to send a message like that,” resident Chuck Mower said. “To depict the president with AK-47s crossed in front of him and link him with Stalin, Hitler and Mao, that’s way over the top.
“This is a case of a legitimate business sending an illegitimate message,” Mower said.
But Keith Cox, who runs the shop with a business partner, said the display has drawn far more approval than objections since he put it up a little more than a month ago.
“I can tell you that for each person who doesn’t like it, there are 150 who compliment us on it. Often, people just open the door and say ‘I love it,’ or give a thumbs-up, while they’re getting gas,” Cox said of the pumps out front that belong to Galaxy convenience store.
The controversy over the storefront, which is in the town’s Reeds Ferry neighborhood about half-mile south of Bedford Road and down the street from the Shaw’s plaza, stands as a local example of heightened emotions that have developed on both sides of the nation’s gun issue since the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
“Guns have been around for a long time, and they’ll be around for a long time to come,” Mower said, adding that as a gun owner himself and a combat veteran who has been trained in firearm use, his objection is not to the legal ownership and use of guns but the giant message the shop’s display sends.
“When we stray from what’s generally acceptable within the great bell curve to something on the fringe, it’s incumbent on us to stand up and say, ‘no, that’s not acceptable,’” Mower said.
Cox, who welcomed the chance to talk about the issue, said he respects others’ opinions and has no desire to engage in heavy debate when the issue comes up.
“One gentleman who came in to express his opinion said he felt we were disrespecting the president.![]()
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