WINTER PARK, Fla. – A Winter Park mom got a billboard advertising for the Central Florida Gun Show removed within a few hours after seeing it outside her kid's school Friday morning.
"I happen to look over, and I noticed this huge billboard right in front of the school entrance," Christine Armstrong said. "It was for the Florida Gun Show, and it had a huge black gun in the middle."
The billboard is at the corner of State Road 436 and Gaslight Circle, not far from the entrance to private Christian school The Geneva School. Armstrong said it was not something she wanted her children to see while in the car line.
"There has just been so many shootings, and I just thought, 'This does not belong in front of my children's school,'" Armstrong said.
So she snapped a picture and sent it to the company listed at the bottom of the billboard, Outfront Media. Within minutes, she got a phone call from the head copy editor at the corporate offices in New York.
"She said that as far as she knew, they hadn't broken any laws, there were no restrictions, but despite that, on a personal level, she did not believe it was appropriate or necessary to have a signage billboard close to a school, so she was troubled by it," Armstrong said.
News 6 also spoke that same representative at Outfront Media on Friday and the spokesperson confirmed the same thing, deciding to move the billboard after receiving the complaint. It was gone by Friday afternoon.
"I was very happy that they took swift action and they recognized it wasn't the best decision," Armstrong said.
However, it wasn't illegal. News 6 couldn't find any state or federal law the restricts billboards of these kinds outside of schools. However, according to industry standards set by the Florida Outdoor Advertising Association, a rule "prohibits advertising products illegal for sale to minors that are intended to be read from, or within 500 feet of, established places of worship, public playground or primary and secondary schools."
The representative with Outfront Media told News 6 the billboard advertising the gun show was within 1,000 feet and within those standards, though they still chose to move it.
News 6 also spoke with a representative with the Central Florida Gun Show, who said they bought about 30 to 40 billboards from Outfront Media and left it to their discretion where to put them up. The Central Florida Gun Show was not aware of the concerns but had no issue with it being moved.