Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

I am a professional photographer for Google and specialize in photographing and mapping the new Google Virtual Tours. These tours allow you to walk through businesses right from Google search results.

As a firearms enthusiast, I have found the best way to take the "scary" out of "shady gun stores" is to take my non-firearm owner friends for a visit to local gun stores or ranges. I especially like it when I can take a beginner to shoot.

Now with this new Google project, I now have the technical mechanism to bring these tours online.

Google allows me to choose my own businesses to photograph, but I have been unable to find a local gun shop to jump at the opportunity.

I was hoping to recruit the help from some forum members who may know the owners. I live in Maryland, but visit the Fredericksburg area and Northern Virginia often. I am also a member of the Northern Virginia Gun Club.

To see what we do, you can visit our team's website at www.mdphototeam.com

You can see some of my work by doing Google searches on any of the following and clicking on "See Inside" on the right hand side of the page:
Mission BBQ, Glen Burnie
Merritt Athletic Club, Towson (or Fort Ave, Canton)
Red Parrot Asian Bistro, Baltimore (or Hanover)
Matsu Japanese Restaurant, Linthicum (or Annapolis)
Congressional Farm, Westminster
James Monroe Birthplace, Westmoreland

Thanks,
Daniel Clark

Hi Daniel -

Two things I thought I would mention. First being that I hear google is going somewhat anti firearm lately by refusing to accept advertising for firearm related businesses if I remember correctly. I realize you are pretty confident you have the go ahead for the project but you may want to clear this particular project with some kind of upper management before you put all the hard work into it just to have it rejected.
Secondly I would think a good firearms shop for a project like this might be Virginia Arms in Manassas. I am not affiliated with them in any way I'm just a previous customer, but they do have a generally non threatening looking store that is quite open for the most part and I imagine they might be receptive to a project like this.

Hi RugerJoe,

Thanks for the info. I have checked with Google and have confirmed that they do not censure firearm related businesses for any of their mapping products. If I can find gun stores or ranges excited about getting a Virtual Tour, we have a full green light!

I think this is a great opportunity to show that it can be done. I just need to find a few store or range owners who realize the potential for their local business and the industry as a whole.

Danny