Is wearing a face mask a security threat in a gun store? Missouri shop owner thinks so
The owner of a gun store in Fenton, Missouri, is taking heat for refusing to allow people into his store while wearing face masks, claiming that they’re a “security risk.”
Ian McFarland, the owner of Modern Weapon Systems, posted on Facebook that he enforces his no-mask policy because he has “customers and my family and employees here to protect” and that it presents a security risk to allow someone potentially concealing their identities by wearing a face cover into the gun shop.
“We are dealing with people buying guns!” the post read. “When in history would any gun store or bank allow people with masks inside?”
McFarland spoke with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, after writing “are these people that stupid?” in his post in regard to the newspaper wanting to interview him about the no-mask policy. He doubled down in citing the safety of those around him.
“I’m not going to put my family or friends or customers in a position of being unsafe,” he said to the Post.
Potential Modern Weapon Systems customer Charleen Shakman spoke to the Post about coming across the sign posted on the front door of the shop while trying to purchase difficult-to-find bullets. “Masks are for cry babies, Democrats and robbers,” the sign read, according to the Post.
”I’d never seen anything like that,” said Shakman to the Post.
Shakman left a one-star review of the store on Yelp, along with a photo of the no-masks sign.
After writing that they had exchanged heated phone calls with the owner, they still don’t have the ammo they originally gone to the store for.
“Such a bummer that the owner didn’t have an interest to make some kind of transaction happen because we drove 45 minutes each way to get here and really would have done anything to get it,” Shakman wrote on Yelp. “Except not wear a mask...”
Her husband Ben also wrote a negative review saying, “My best advice - stay way far away from this place!”
McFarland responded to the Shakmans Yelp reviews and posted a screengrab on Facebook saying, “The store was ‘Karen’ed today for our ‘NO MASK POLICY.’”
Other gun stores in the area are allowing people wearing masks to enter, the Post reported said.
“We leave it up to the customer — it’s their call. Some wear them, some don’t,” Nathan Dunn, manager of Dunn’s Sporting Goods in Herculaneum in Jefferson County said to the Post.
Missouri has a no statewide mask mandate and Gov. Mike Parson has said that encouraging people to wear masks “is as far as he’s willing to go,” reported the Springfield News-Leader.
In August, the White House COVID-19 task force recommended that Missouri issue a statewide mask mandate to curb “high levels” of transmission in close to half the counties in the state. Parson disregarded the recommendation, according to the News-Leader.
In Missouri, 1,689 people have died from the coronavirus as of Sept. 8, according to John Hopkins University.
This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Is wearing a face mask a security threat in a gun store? Missouri shop owner thinks so."