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Written By: Kelly Ritenour
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January 12, 2016
SARASOTA – A local gun shop is under fire for its newest additions to the business.
Tube Dude is ubiquitous along the Suncoast, promoting businesses from restaurants to insurance companies. A “his and her” tube dude pair has county code enforcement pulling the trigger on one store’s display.
Kelly Ireland says he’s heard several people say they’ve passed his store without even realizing it. Ireland says, “Oh I didn’t know there was a gun store… they didn’t see us.” Until these went up, the newest additions at Gunsmith’s Gallery on Tamiami Trail.
With several shops in town using Tube Dude figures as part of the store displays, gun shop owners Cheri and Kelly Ireland thought there’d be no problem. They say, “There are several shops in town that have Tube Dudes, even several figures out front, including one just a couple blocks down the street and when we saw that we figured we would get two, a female and a male.”
While they say they felt it was the appropriate thing to do, since they sell firearms and accessories for both male and females, other* found it to be offensive. The attention led to an investigation by Sarasota County. Code enforcement called it illegal signage.
Cheri Ireland says, “It’s not actually a sign and we actually haven’t used all of our signage on our building…but it doesn’t seem to be a sign ordinance to other people. Then, when you ask if we can read the sign ordinance it turns out that it really isn’t specifically stated in the words that they gave to us; that we could only have one figure 10 feet from the street and the other 20 feet from the street; that is pretty much at our buildings windows.”
The owners say folks had more of a problem with the female holding the handgun than they did with the man holding the shotgun. For now, the owners say they are complying with the county, but they’d like to see more paperwork to know what they are complying with.
http://www.snntv.com/2016/01/12/tube-dude-controversy-at-local-gun-shop/
Regards,
hm
