Father and Son in Arkansas Turned Away from Gun Range for Maybe, Possibly looking Muslim

A Hot Springs, Arkansas gun range declared last fall that they would be a Muslim-free zone:

Pointing to various acts of violence carried out by Muslims – the recent beheading in Oklahoma, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 – the owner of the Gun Cave Indoor Firing Range in Hot Springs, Arkansas, announced this week that she was making the facility a “Muslim Free Zone.”

In a statement on her website, owner Jan Morgan said:

“This is not a coffee and donut shop. This is a live fire indoor shooting range,” she wrote. “In the range, people are shooting guns in close proximity to each other, so my patrons depend on me and my discretion regarding who I allow to shoot beside them. One mistake in judgment on my part could cost innocent people their lives.”

How does one determine who is Muslim and who isn't? One father and son duo in Arkansas found out this week:

"My dad and I used to go to this gun range," said the young man, who asked not to be identified by name, "but we haven’t had as much of a chance to go in recent years since I've been at college. It's changed ownership recently."

"When we went in, a woman asked, ‘Where are you guys from?’ We told her we were from Hot Springs. She said, "this is a Muslim free shooting range," so if we are [Muslim] and if we don’t like the rule, then leave. We said that we’re not Muslim, but my dad asked, ‘Why is it Muslim free?’ and they started having a conversation. Then, all of a sudden, I don’t know what went wrong, but she stopped us from filling out the paperwork and said ‘I don’t think you guys should be here.’ She told us to leave or she’d call the cops on us."

Although the young man didn't want to be identified, he went on to say:

"We’re brown; I don’t know if she assumed we were Muslim," he continued. "When she first asked us, she said, ‘I would hope if you were Muslim you guys wouldn't be cowards and would be up front about it.'" The student told the Times he was born in the U.S. and lived in Hot Springs for ten years before going to college in a different Arkansas town; he considers Hot Springs his home.