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Neighbors Alarmed By New Gun Store Just 850 Feet From School In Harrison

HARRISON, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- Concerns have mounted in Westchester County over a new gun shop that stands less than half a mile from an elementary school.

As CBS2's Lou Young reported, L&L Sports recently opened on Halstead Avenue in Harrison. The small shop is in an alleyway mall just off the main drag in Harrison, and is just a three-minute walk from the Parsons Elementary School.

The gun shop specializes in hunting rifles, accessories, and most recently controversy.

"It's just simply not appropriate for a downtown area where children are walking through all the time," said Michelle Geller of Harrison.

In the six weeks since L&L Sports opened, an online petition has gathered steam to move or close the business.

Owner Lou Zacchio, who already runs an online gun business in Harrison, was surprised by the resistance to his new brick-and-mortar location.

"This is a legal business. I am legal," Zacchio said. "I just don't understand what all the opposition is."

Harrison Mayor Ron Belmont said there have been gun shops in downtown Harrison before, but times have changed.

"At one time, there were three gun stores in our downtown area," Belmont said, "(buit) it's post Sandy Hook and post a lot of other shootings that have happened over the past several years, and there's a whole new awareness and alarm to guns."

Parsons Memorial Elementary School is 850 feet from the shop. Students there go through active drills.

At L&L Sports, CBS2 asked to see a military-style AR-15 like the one that was used in the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

"I don't have any. I don't carry them," Zacchio said. "I will order them for a customer if they want, but I won't keep them on the shelf."

Zacchio said regardless, the opposition to his store has been intense at times.

"What I hear is, 'Shut him down and let him sue the town,'" Zacchio said. "When the question was posed at a town board meeting, 'Would you be amenable to him moving his store?' the answer was, 'No, we want him out of here.'"
Mayor Belmont said he sympathizes with upset residents, but that the store has a constitutional right to open where it is. Three of the town's five board members want to fashion some kind of restrictive zoning rule, but it is not clear if could be retroactive.

The board members were reminded that their fight to restrict chain businesses in the area was an expensive loss -- when Dunkin' Donuts won the right to open.

With the Harrison store, there are now three gun shops in lower Westchester County. The other two are in Elmsford and Mount Vernon.

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