An employee at RJ’s Bob-Be-Que Shack in Mission, Kansas says that a man in a MAGA hat flashed a gun after he was asked to put on a face mask while inside the restaurant.
Arlo Kinsey, 18, told The Kansas City Star that he had made the request for the person to wear a mask.
“He said he had an exemption, so I asked him if I could see the exemption just to make sure,” Kinsey said. “And then he showed me his gun saying that that was his exemption, and then he cited some law that I can’t remember now because I was too busy looking at his gun.” (It’s possible that this was the law he was referring to.)
Kinsey went to get the owner. The owner talked–“yelled, more so”–with the MAGA hat-wearing customer. Eventually the man left.
“I just graduated high school,” Kinsey said. “I’m working at a minimum wage job just to save up for college, and I got to tell this dude to wear a mask because that’s what I’m required to do by law. And he’s going to shoot me because of that? It just doesn’t make sense to me. The cost-benefit analysis is just not–it doesn’t work.”
He said that incident probably went on for less than 5 minutes, and they he didn’t have enough time to call police.
The customer “wasn’t there to shoot anybody,” said Kinsey. “He was there to make a statement.” But using the gun made it a threat, he said.
The restaurant’s owner, retired Marine Bob Palmgren—who said he likes Trump—also said he felt threatened in the incident.
“Especially these days, it’s scary when people have any kind of gun, even if it’s a fake gun,” he said. “You don’t know what he’s going to do. I have a lot of guys who I know come in here and are concealed carrying. But they aren’t showing their gun to anybody.”
He took his employee’s side on this.
“[Kinsey] comes around and says this guy won’t put a mask on and has a gun, and I’m like holy sh*t,” said Palmgren. “I run over there, and I’m like hey, what’s going on? And he shows me his Trump hat. And I like Trump. Everybody’s got problems. But it doesn’t make a difference. You don’t have a mask on. And I’m like, your gun’s not going to kill coronavirus, now get the hell out of here.”
[Screengrab via The Kansas City Star]
