Two unnamed racist vendors were kicked out of a South Dakota gun show after they were caught selling racist targets over the weekend. The targets featured a caricatured image of a black person’s silhouette running. The logo on the target read “official RUNNIN’ N***** target”. The gun show was held at The Ramkota Hotel in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
The gun show organizer, Bob Campbell, of the Dakota Territory Gun Collectors Association (DTGCA), says he banned the offending vendors as soon as he became aware the targets were being sold. Campbell added that he was “very disappointed and disgusted” that the targets were being sold, and that the offensive vendors would not be welcome at future DTGCA-sponsored gun shows in other parts of the state.
Dave Hauck, a photographer for KSFY-TV, an ABC affiliate station in Sioux Falls, captured an exchange on video with one of the vendors selling the targets. When Hauck asked the dealer if the target was offensive, the vendor replied:
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To who?Are you Negro? You know, there are some black people, and then there are some Negroes.
He then implied that the racist targets were popular, stating:
I sold 500 of them this weekend, so what difference does it make?
Hopefully, the vendor was exaggerating the popularity of the targets, in his hopeless attempt to justify his decision to sell them. Whether he sold one target or five hundred targets, there is no justification for peddling such blatantly racist merchandise at a gun show.
While it would be convenient to dismiss this as an isolated incident, this is not the first time a gun show has marketed offensive black targets to consumers. Unfortunately, bigots have turned racist gun targets into something of a cottage industry. Zombie Industries, a popular merchandiser for mannequin-like targets, caught heat in 2013, for selling Barack Obama and Al Sharpton shooting targets. In January 2015, the North Miami Beach Police Department’s practice of using black mug shots for target practice, sparked national outrage.
The event organizer, Bob Campbell, made the correct decision by kicking the vendors out of the gun show, and by making it clear that selling racist targets was unacceptable. All merchants who sell targets and guns should also make it clear that racism is unacceptable. After all, an armed society cannot be a polite society, if the folks carrying the guns are just a bunch of racists.
Keith Brekhus is a progressive American who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He is co-host for the Liberal Fix radio show. He holds a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri. In 2002, he ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate in the state of Missouri. In 2014, he worked as a field organizer for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick’s successful re-election bid in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District. He can be followed on Twitter @keithbrekhus or on Facebook.
