Community celebrates end to store's bb gun sales

POINT BREEZE (WPVI) -- A Philadelphia community is celebrating after they took on a controversial item. They demanded a local store stop selling bb guns.

In Point Breeze the community says it has succeeded in getting some dangerous guns off the street.

A corner market at Point Breeze and Latona will no longer sell the airsoft guns - toy bb-like guns that shoot hard plastic balls that look too much like large caliber semiautomatic handguns.

Committeewoman Nakia Carr tells us, "They're essentially toys that police can mistake as a real weapon. If they pull it out police aren't going to know that it's a toy. They're going to shoot, and rightfully so."

On Labor Day the Action Cam was there as roughly 100 protestors weathered the sweltering heat urging shoppers to boycott the store.

It worked.

The owner, who owns several other corner markets, has agreed to stop selling the guns that actually cost only $2 apiece.

Community leaders had been asking him to cease for a long time, but under the heat from the demonstrators he finally agreed.

Neighborhood resident Anton Moore says, "We're going to keep on sending decoys in. We're going to keep on checking other locations."

Reaction from the neighborhood is overwhelmingly positive. Many have sensed the danger these guns bring.

Resident Zaaire German says, "I think they need to get the guns out the stores because it can be dangerous for a young black man to be walking around with a bb gun."

And Christopher Woods says, "I thought they was real glocks. And I heard you can take the orange piece off and turn it black or something. It's really going to look real because glocks are made out of plastic anyway. So, it's dangerous."

Activists believe they have eliminated what was clearly a recipe for disaster. Now they plan to monitor other stores and use pressure to stop the sale of these bb guns, which in these days and times are not what you would consider an innocent toy.