Oathkeepers boycott Waffle House for “gun ban”
Everyones favourite armed Militia nutjobs are in the news again this morning. This time they are in a furor over a Waffle House restaurant that told an armed veteran to leave his gun outside when he brought it in.
The outrage!
The horror!
How dare they treat veterans this way!
They are calling for a boycott of Waffle House over this supposedly abhorrent behavior but, as is usual with stories like these, there’s a couple of small problems:
1. This Waffle House generally DOES ban guns in its restaurants, it’s just loose with enforcing this where veterans are concerned.
2. The main reason WHY they told this veteran to leave his gun behind was because he’d been involved in a fight earlier at this same restaurant and they were worried about a repeat.
But of course when do our loyal patriots give a crap about that? Any action against guns is an action against America y’all.
Controversy erupted this week after a Waffle House in Kentucky refused to serve an armed National Guardsman — but now the restaurant’s owner says there’s more to the story than was previously reported.
Soldier Billy Welch says sometime after he placed his breakfast order on Sunday morning, his waitress noticed the gun holstered at his side and told him he’d have to leave his gun in his car or leave the restaurant. This didn’t sit too well with a fellow customer, who took his complaint to Facebook and subsequently incited a social media firestorm, with Facebook users and Yelp reviewers calling the staff “stupid” and “bigoted” and calling for a Waffle House boycott.
The owner of the Waffle House franchise, Ray Daniels, issued a statement today via Facebook to explain his situation. The statement appears to have since been taken down, but per local news station Lex 18, it read as follows:
Unfortunately, we have been besieged with a misrepresentation of the facts regarding the incident with the National Guardsman, Mr. Welch, at one of LexiDan Foods Waffle House establishments. The facts are simple. We do have a policy posted on our Waffle House franchise buildings stating our policy in permitting firearms in our buildings. We normally are very loose on how we enforce that policy in terms of the military.
However, on this particular incident, two facts have not been reported accurately that facilitated the situation with Mr. Welch. First, he was an active participant in a fight on the premises several weeks prior to September 27th. He was restrained and taken off the premises by off-duty police officers that were eating in the restaurant at the time. The second item not reported accurately was the time the most recent incident occurred, 2AM. We have associates who have to make snap decisions on our third shifts to provide for their own safety and the safety of our customers. Our associates decided because of Mr. Welch’s recent altercation, which they witnessed, it was in their best interest at 2 AM to ask Mr. Welch to leave his firearm in his vehicle. Mr. Welch decided to leave. We still tried to garner his business at that point. I am supportive of my team’s decision. I was not there and will not judge their decision making after the fact.