In a national environment fostering a growing and unfounded suspicion of lawful gun owners, it’s encouraging to see reports like this from Saturday’s NBC Nightly News telecast. It features a small restaurant in the appropriately-named town of Rifle, Colorado, where the owner not only permits customers to bring guns inside the eatery but actually encourages them to do so.
The restaurant, named (what else?) Shooters Grill, is owned by a 27-year-old mother of four named Lauren Boebert, and she begins every day of work by strapping on her 9mm. A sign on the front door of the restaurant, where other places may ask customers to wear a shirt, lays out the welcome mat for open-carrying patrons to bring their guns inside. The NBC report showed customers from all walks of life enjoying breakfast, many of them proudly displaying a packed holster on their hips. Even the waitresses deliver burgers and fries while packing heat. If this isn’t the American dream, what is?
“Many of my waitresses already open carry…they approached me if they could carry while working,” Boebert told NBC. Her answer? Why not. In a country where many large restaurant establishments are going the opposite way – banning customers from bringing guns into their business even if the law says they can carry – Shooter’s Grill has become a kind of 2nd Amendment hotspot.
In one fantastic part of the segment, the reporter sat down to ask an NRA-cap wearing customer what he would think if Shooter’s stopped allowing guns in the restaurant. “I wouldn’t come in here,” he said.
“What about businesses that don’t allow them?” the reporter asked.
“I don’t go in there,” he told her plainly.
While Shooter’s Grill may be in the minority, they certainly aren’t alone. In response to a growing call for strict gun control from liberals who don’t understand the nature of violent crime, many small businesses are taking a stand. The NBC report quoted a Tennessee restaurant owner as saying that the country’s sidelong attitude towards guns was exactly what persuaded her to allow them. “As the owner, I wanted to stand my ground,” the woman said. “I have that constitutional right. If you like it, that’s great. If you don’t, I’m sorry for you.”
Perhaps the greatest thing about places like Shooter’s Grill is how effortlessly they get the goat of leftist gun control supporters who flail about in apoplectic rage whenever confronted with exercised constitutional rights. The NBC report quoted one such liberal, Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action: “This is a really dangerous situation and it’s contributing to our culture of gun violence in America,” Watts said. “We are not okay with this.”
Whether one group of gun Nazis are against it or not doesn’t seem to make much of a difference to business owners like Lauren Boebert. Let’s hope that other businesses across the country take a cue from Shooter’s Grill and stand against the unreasonable encroachment on our Second Amendment rights.
