“We will attempt to teach you all the necessary information you need to obtain your [Concealed Handgun License],” the ad says. Then towards the end, it adds: “If you are a socialist liberal and/or voted for the current campaigner in chief, please do not take this class. You have already proven that you cannot make a knowledgeable and prudent decision under the law.”
And then: “If you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class with no shame; I am Crockett Keller, thank you, and God bless America.”
I’m not of the opinion that Second Amendment rights are limited to Christians or Republicans, and if you’re licensed by the state to administer a concealed carry class, you should do it without regards to race, religion or national origin. I agree that this man has a right to be a bigot, but he doesn’t have a right to be a government certified bigot. To treat every non-Christian Arab or muslim as a potential cold blooded killer is exactly the same kind of bigotry that’s perpetrated against many law-abiding gun owners by the folks who hate gun ownership. It’s not going to help us, and it’s definitely an example of how not to win.
All he’s doing is giving the rest of us gun owners a bad name.
Not all muslums are terrorist…but all terrorist are muslum….When they get offended at the sight of the cross and demand that something to be done about it, even at a catholit collage…..Get offended over the word Jesus…….Demand sareah law……. I don’t care what you think about him. It’s his fundamental right to beleive so.. And quite honestly. his right to say so. You have nobody to blame but obuma, who has fuelled more raciseum in this country that anybody…No, I’d be dammed if I would train anybody in that regard to.Just like training to get the air licence. I guess yoe’d say thats there right to……
but all terrorist are muslim
Tim McVeigh was a muslim? I’m sure this will also be shocking to a lot of Brits who were victims of terrorism perpetrated by Irish-Catholics.
“I guess yoe’d say thats there right to……”
Dude, you can’t be for real. You’re really a $_STUDIES major from City College, over here from DU trolling as what you think your typical Red State gun nut is like, right? I mean, “muslums”? Seriously?
We should send a liberal to out-shoot him.
I’d volunteer, but…
It’s more than just bad for gun owners, that attitude is bad for everyone… A gun free world won’t bring piece but tolerance might. Although I do agree, he has the right to feel that way.
Hmmm, he’a a private individual, working for himself. No public money is involved. He has the right to speak his mind and to teach or associate with whomever he chooses to.
We of course have the right to disaprove of his opinions and to withold our money from him. That is, not do business with him.
I would not do business with him, but I defend his right to speak and choose how he wishes to operate his little business.
Truth is, that when folks that have opinions like that in business, the market soon takes care of them and their business.
Sight picture + breath control + trigger control = gun control
But a public sanction is involved in the form of the instructor certification. I think if the state is going to require training to carry, then it’s within its rights to say that anyone carrying a state instructor certification can’t discriminate.
Why? The state instructor certification just says he is qualified to teach. It doesn’t require him to teach. He’s a private individual, shouldn’t he be able to teach whomever he chooses?
And I think the state is within its right to suggest not discriminating as a qualification to teach under the state’s authority.
In other words, he can teach whomever he chooses… but not with a state sanction to do so.
I don’t like this guy and wouldn’t take his class if it were free–but instructor certificates shouldn’t be may issue any more than licenses should. Imagine an instructor licensing bureau controlled by an active member of MAIG, for instance.
It’s not a certificate on whether he can teach firearms classes in general. He’s free to do that regardless of certification. However, this is an issue on whether he should be allowed to discriminate in a mandatory training operation required by the state to carry a firearm. As long as he’s essentially acting as an agent of the state for that purpose, they have every right to yank his certification to teach to their standards. NRA has every right to yank his credentials (if he has them) for violating their standards. He can still advertise & teach all he wants after that. His students just can’t use his training to get a carry license or claim to have taken an NRA class.
It’s not really may-issue in my view, because the criteria are objective. As long as you don’t discriminate, you can be certified.
I kind of look at it this way… if we lived in a society where racism and bigotry were widespread, say the state passed a requirement that you need to seek training to carry a firearm….
Actually, I’m just going to make this another post :)
Which is why the State shouldn’t require it. It’s a self correcting problem. If his bigotry is really that bad, then the very people he’s trying to exclude will vote with their feet anyway, hurting his bottom line. Hell you need a license for any business nowadays. Does that make thought police ok? He has a right to run his business any way he sees fit. Think about it, if a liquor store owner (license required)refused service to Indians, because of thier propensity to break things when drunk, (not to mention bootlegging laws on the Rez)should his license be revoked? What about door to door Amway salesmen? City permit involved. His business, his rules.
In this case the state is requiring people to patronize his business, so it’s (sadly) more like a health insurance company refusing to cover Indians.
It’s fine if he sets that policy for his regular shooting classes, but he doesn’t have that right while acting as a state certified CPL instructor.
The certification means that he’s acting on behalf of the state; as the state is not allowed to act like that, neither is he.
Well, then, why don’t you start an insurance company (or a training course) to compete with him, instead of demanding that the government cater to your whims by force?
You either believe that the government has the right to enforce political correctness on everyone, or you don’t.
+1
It’s the same as a gun dealer having the right to refuse a sale if he thinks the buyer is in some way a danger to society.
Just because he’s licensed by the govt doesn’t make him a representative of the Govt.
I personally applaud him for having the nerve to publicly state his feelings in spite of the current PC bull crap going around.
Under current laws, if a dealer has an objective reason to believe that, it’s OK. If he believes that because the guy is black, or because the guy is muslim, that’s unlawful discrimination. This is one of those stuck between a rock and a hard place situation that our opponents are quick to ignore when it comes to FFLs stopping straw sales. You could turn down say, 5 black guys with their girlfriends for completely objective reasons, and end up accused of racial discrimination. Some dealers are reluctant to deny sales for that reason.
Either way, I don’t admire the guy to publicly state his feelings. It’s the same attitude that believed every Jap was a potential enemy of the country, and allowed them to be herded into internment camps, their property seized, and their lives ruined. I’m perfectly OK with society coming down hard on actual bigotry. I think there’s a difference between speaking against Islam as a religion, and discriminating against someone because they happen to be muslim.
Actually, you’re wrong about ‘refus[ing] service to Indians’. Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it’s illegal for businesses to discriminate on the basis of race. The Supreme Court has upheld this with such rulings as Heart of Atlanta Hotel v. United States and Katzenbach v. McClung.
Valid point, ecurb. Gives me something to think about. Mind if I quote you?
Feel free. Well, not free, but my royalty rates are very reasonable.
IIRC the discrimination rulings had their root in the old idea of common carriers under common law. You can have a racist country club or a women-only book association, but if your business takes customers in off the street you have to take everyone/.
Which is nonsense on steroids. By that exact logic, Sebastian can’t ban commenters or censor them because I can find his website through Google.
I would hope that the majority of people–not just those being maligned in the advertisement–would not patronize a place like this for the same reason they wouldn’t patronize a lunch counter with a “whites only” sign on the door, regardless of the law.
Jackass.
I wouldn’t give this jerk a dime.
That said, I don’t think the government has a place telling him who he can sell his services to, license or no (unless he’s receiving public money to perform the service- I’m assuming he paid a license fee and was tested/certified to teach, and is a private business concern).
If I were to obtain a CNA certification and decided to provide home care services as a private business, and did not want to take clients living in low income predominately ethnic areas, would it be right for the government to force me to against my wishes in the name of fighting racism?
What if you have a CDL and own your own rig, but don’t want to haul products from a company that produces birth control because you’re a devout Catholic? Since you’re licensed by the state, should they be able to force you to?
That line gets blurred too much and you have yet another regulatory bureaucracy laying on regulation after regulation to justify it’s own existence.
This guy being a douchebag doesn’t affect us other than making us shake our heads in disgust. Letting the government control the douchebag’s client list would turn around and bite us in the keister down the line, like it inevitably does.
@SDN.. That’s next. Blogs and forums will probably become subject to public accomodations laws at some point in the near future.
You have it exactly wrong. The State has no business judging his religious beliefs. If a state-certified private business wants to discriminate on the basis of religion, the Government shall make no law to limit his discrimination.
If he had a private instructor certification, that would be one thing. Then he could teach who he wants, as far as I’m concerned. Though I would hope any private entity would also revoke his certification, I don’t think it needs to be required as a matter of law.
But in this case the state has setup an instructor certification system to administer training which you have to take if you want to exercise your right to bear arms. Given that, I think the state is completely within its powers to suggest that someone holding that certification can’t discriminate. Aside from the fact that a libertarian solution to this would be to not require training, I think this is far more solidly libertarian than current anti-discrimination law.
As current law is a gun range offering training to the general public couldn’t discriminate under most public accommodation anti-discrimination laws. A private instructor, I don’t think, would be considered a public accommodation, but a private instructor could be considered such, depending on how he was conducting business. Under current prevailing law, the state can essentially force you to not discriminate on the condition of operating the business.
You want to tell me that if you were the licensed instructor and a person of obvious Muslim faith came up to you and asked to attend your class so he could be licensed to carry a gun so he could more efficiently kill infidels you would feel like you’re required to teach him?
You’re nuts if you do.
I think it’s also relevant to note that if any potential shooting student approaches an instructor and says they want to be licensed to carry so they can kill innocent people, the proper response is to call the police immediately regardless of their religion or political persuasion. That defense of the guy’s position isn’t valid at all.
The answer to this is yes. Public Accomodations laws passed under state statute, and under federal law with the Heart of Atlanta Hotel caselaw, instructors cannot at all consider protected factors.
The answer to this is no. His religion in this particular case doesn’t matter. You could say the same things about a christian or jew saying the same thing and Sebastian would be WELL within his rights to decline.
That would also be evidence of a attempt to commit a crime, reported to the proper authorities.
The problem is that this instructor, in violation of federal law, is making the assumption based on national origin and percieved/actual religion.
Btw, you folks who are supporting this instructor, are giving all gun owners a bad name. People like Ladd Everitt of CSGV regularly troll this site, lifting snippets of your commentary to add to their PR campaign to malign gun owners as racists, bigots, and murderers.
For myself, I hope they the TX DPS burns the guy from teaching CHL Courses, and that I hope NRA revokes his instructor credentials, lest they get hit with a lawsuit too for allowing this guy to teach under his instructor credentials with the NRA (assuming he has NRA instructor credentials in the first place).
Of course, if they had Constitutional Carry, it wouldn’t be an issue…
Just for its value as an analogy, more than forty years ago one of my favorite gun shops here in Pennsylvania would refuse to sell guns to any African-American customers at all. The owner said that gun shop owners knew (at the time) that they were unique in being able to refuse to sell their product to anyone, and then be praised for their justified caution.
It was of course one more example of the application of racism to de facto “gun control.”
“It’s the same attitude that believed every Jap was a potential enemy of the country, and allowed them to be herded into internment camps, their property seized, and their lives ruined.”
Absolute detestable analogy – The, as you say, ‘Japs’ killed over 100,000 US nationals in Manila alone.
And you compare this to some businessman advertising that he is not offering to sell a service to democrat or muslim… You really should examine the values you live under.
I’m fairly comfortable with my values, which don’t allow for depriving millions of Americans of fundamental liberty without any due process, just because they had the wrong ancestry.
Are you really willing to defend the Japanese internment? Had Japanese-Americans violently resisted that, I would not have argued they were morally or ethnically wrong. It would be understandable from my point of view.
But I am not a bigot, so my point of view might be rather skewed.
The all-Japanese 442nd infantry–composed of Japanese-Americans in WWII–was by some accounts the most decorated unit in American military history, fighting with distinction in Europe while many of its members families were locked up in internment camps, and of course having their property confiscated under the guise of protecting the public. It’s a shameful episode in American history for which there is no defense. Unfortunately, there are many parallels throughout our history where we failed to live up to our values due to temporary hysteria or greed masquerading as hysteria, for example, French speakers in the midwest had their property confiscated as dangerous foreigners during the War of 1812 even though we were fighting the British at the time. Hysteria against American-Muslims is another example, though so far we have not gone off the deep end despite the efforts of some to try to get us to.
I look forward to the day when our country starts rounding up all those evil domestic terrorists without an ounce of Due Process: you know, like all those Libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, “Don’t Tread on Me” flag wavers, and so forth. NOT!
The rounding up of Japanese-Americans, confiscating their property, and putting them into internment camps is a black mark, committed by someone who ought (but isn’t) remembered as a fascist President. We are *lucky* that we stopped at internment and confiscation of property, and didn’t go all out and start killing them, like Lenin, Hitler or Stalin did.
Your determination to defend these internments only indicates how little you understand liberty; indeed, dictators have especially liked war, because it has allowed them to do all sorts of tyranny in the name of “protecting liberty”.
I’m fairly comfortable with my values, which don’t allow for depriving millions of Americans of fundamental liberty without any due process, just because they had the wrong ancestry.
MILLIONS? We are talking about an order of about 100,000 here. About the same number of American Nationals of the PI that Japan killed for shiites and giggles just because MacArthur returned. Oh, I am sorry, you were talking about due process.
DUE PROCESS? They had due process. Their nation, right or wrong, declared war against the US. Japan rounded up civilian POWs, the US did the same.
ANCESTRY? No, try citizenship. Just like Japan fairly relied upon. They were enemy nationals who refused to leave an arbitrary security zone of the west coast. A lot of their kids were not registered with the consulate as Japanese citizens yet (the old country had some arcane laws that one could not inherit land if you were not a citizen). After being picked up some did renounce their loyalty to Japan, but a bit late, after a war started (but that is a bit complex to explain if one does not find it self-explanatory) and the rest did not renounce loyalty to Japan…
Are you really willing to defend the Japanese internment? Had Japanese-Americans violently resisted that, I would not have argued they were morally or ethnically wrong. It would be understandable from my point of view.
OF COURSE it would have been ‘right’ for Japanese to violently resist internment as enemy POWs, that’s the whole point of war, French Resistance and all that. Do you really, really believe a bunch of Americans were tooling around Japan and its occupied territory unmolested?
But I am not a bigot, so my point of view might be rather skewed.
MORAL RELATIVISM is such a wonderful thing.
My apologies for being wrong on the number.
Other than that, you are a bigot and a racist. Go away.
I dont have a problem with what he says/does/doesnt do. This is America. The muslim that is offended can go down the road and find someone who is willing to train the enemy.
You can’t fix stupid. Well, I obviously cannot.
For historical perspective regarding the Japanese:
My uncle was captured at Corregidor and was one of only eight out of his unit of 350+ men to survive the war. While to this day he holds very low regard for the Japanese military, he has never professed animosity toward the Japanese people. He rightly separates the two entities.
I would not want to be responsible for the actions of my government. My votes have demonstrably carried very little weight in 40+ years of voting.
He is neither ignorant nor a bigot. He is very outspoken. I think all these politically correct detractors wish they had intestinal fortitude to express their opinions. It must be tough for y’all to live life without a spine.
I have the intestinal fortitude to say he’s both ignorant and a bigot.