The Patriot Post® · Restaurant Owner Bans 'Assault' Rifle Owners

If you’re one of the proud owners of an “assault” rifle — in other words, if you’re like millions of Americans who exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms — you are now barred from entering the property of Anne Verrill, a restaurant operator from Maine.

Following the Orlando terrorist attack, Verrill went on an anti-gun rant on Facebook, where she declared, “If you own [an AR-15] or you condone the ownership of this gun for private use, you may no longer enter either of my restaurants, because the only thing I want to teach my children is love.” She added, “You don’t privately own this weapon to protect your family, or to hunt. I understand that I may be offending members of my community, but this is a human issue, not a gun owners issue, or a Second Amendment issue, it is about humans. I cannot, in good conscience, accept anyone inside of my restaurants who believes that this is OK.”

As a private business owner, Ms. Verrill arguably has a constitutional right to provide services to whomever she sees fit. As Bre Payton put it, she “doesn’t want to serve customers who own guns that look scary because she says doing so would violate her conscience.” Ah, there’s that word again: “conscience.”

If Verrill has a conscientious objection to serving gun owners, then why don’t liberals give Christian bakers who have religious objections to catering same-sex weddings the same leeway? Or Catholic nuns who have serious qualms with abortifacients, which the Obama administration wants forced on them? In the liberal vernacular, “tolerance” is just another word for “double standard.”