However, his timing has made some in the town uncomfortable.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Allen said. “It’s the right to protect yourself.”

GLOUCESTER — When George Allen Jr. mounted a 15-square-foot sign that reads “WE SELL AMMO” outside of his shop here, just days after a mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, he posted the bright yellow marquee not only to let customers know about a new product on his shelves but also to make a statement in support of the Second Amendment.

“It freaked me out when I saw it,” said Mandy Davis, who lives in East Gloucester. “I had a visceral reaction. It just seemed so violent.”


Davis was so concerned, she confronted Allen in his store.

“Why now?” she asked him.

She said Allen told her that he’d rather be the shooter than the one getting shot — “You gotta protect yourself.”

Davis said she wasn’t satisfied with this answer. Maybe if it didn’t happen in the wake of the Orlando shooting, she wouldn’t be so upset, but posting the sign when he did was “ugly timing,” she said.

“He’s taking an opportunity to blast his politics in a violent way,” Davis said.

Allen’s store, Gloucester Service Center, does a bit of everything — sells bait, fixes lawn mowers, sharpens knives — and he said he has wanted to sell ammunition for a while. He’s had a permit to do so for eight years, he said.

But he didn’t begin selling it until just around the time that Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people in an Orlando nightclub and injured 53 others.

The timing, Allen said, was coincidental.

“Every week something happens,” he said. “You can’t link this with anything; it just happened.”

But the timing could be fortuitous for Allen, said Steve Germain, who works at a boat supply shop near Allen’s store. He has observed that gun owners buy more ammunition after mass shootings.


“So it’s more of a smart business plan,” said Germain, who has purchased ammunition from Allen and doesn’t have a problem with the sign.

Beyond the political statement, Allen said the sign is a necessary part of doing business.

“It’s there to sell ammo,” he said. “I put it up so people know about my business, just like any business.”

Allen said he didn’t intend to antagonize anyone and he doesn’t understand why people would be offended. He said after a mass shooting is the precise time people should be “reminded that you can protect yourself.”

However, speaking from her downtown Gloucester house, resident Carolin Catalano said people here needn’t fear for their safety.

“There’s no need for a gun here,” she said. “I have no fear at all.”

Catalano said she “doesn’t like guns at all. Period.” And she called the sign at Allen’s store “really horrible.”

Allen now sells all kinds of ammunition and estimates that he has about 30,000 rounds in his store. He keeps the ammunition behind a locked cage door. He has guns in a safe back there, too. He doesn’t sell them, but he said he would if there weren’t so many forms to fill out.

Allen said he was expecting some pushback from the community. The response, he said, has varied. One of his friends stopped by the store to tell him, “You should put the sign in neon lights.”


Reis Thebault can be reached at reis.thebault@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @ReisThebault.