Earlier this week, an Iowa indoor football team prepared to raffle off an AR-15 at their game on Saturday.
Last night, the owner wisely, yet reluctantly, postponed it.
The deadly assault weapon giveaway was part of the Sioux City Bandits’ annual “Military Night” celebration, with the proceeds benefitting veterans and veterans’ services.
The raffle was scheduled to take place roughly three weeks after the acts of domestic terrorism in Buffalo, NY and Ulvalde, TX where a combined 34 victims were murdered.
Those events were enough to put the raffle on hold, but not enough to cancel it.
And from the words of team owner J.R. Bond, you can tell that as soon as he’s ready, he’ll re-launch it.
“Right now, it’s the hot topic with a loud group of people,” said Bond. “It makes people uncomfortable. The Bandits have never been about controversy. We’ve done this is the past without any issues at all. And I guess our front office didn’t think through the whole situation with Texas and everything.”
The Bandits are part of the Champions Indoor Football league.
Earlier in the week, Bond began finger-pointing in his adamance that the raffle would proceed as planned.
In an interview with the Des Moines Register earlier in the week, Bond stated the team wouldn’t “cower down and backtrack because some guys in New York City and some guys in Boston, Massachusetts, think it’s bad taste.”
Notice his lack of empathy for the victims and seeming disdain for those voicing their pain, concern and anger over the continued rash of mass shootings plaguing the country.
In reality, the only remorse he appears to have is for the decision the postpone (not cancel) the AR-15 raffle, a promotion the team has run before.
But the pressure from becoming a distraction and, more impactfully, concern expressed by a team sponsor over the promotion and its timing, coerced Bond to postpone it.
David Bernstein, one of the owners of State Steel, took to Facebook to say the company would pull its team sponsorship if the promotion went on as planned.
“This has nothing to do with Second Amendment anything,” said Bernstein. “We’re supporters of Second Amendment rights. This has to do with insensitivity at a terrible time to run a promotion like this.”
It was a terrible promotion to begin with, regardless of who it benefits.
The raffle, in conjunction with a local gun shop, was open to anyone 18 years and older. According to the raffle’s rules, the gun was not in the arena (the winner would have to pick it up at the shop) and participants were subject to background checks.
Bond felts others made it political, but that’s just a customary talking point of those who immediately jump to the “Second Amendment” rights defense.
“Children die and to make it about a team in Sioux City, giving away an AR-15, to have some sort of connection to that is just absurd,” Bond said. “To make this a political opportunity for people who have an agenda is absurd.”
We’re pretty sure he knows what this is about, but he’s walking the traditional line of gun owners who point to everything else but the destruction that guns cause, especially in the wrong hands.
But Bond doesn’t care.
He’s just waiting for the coverage to settle so he can reschedule the promotion.
“The plan would be when public perception changes on it,” Bond said. “We aren’t a political organization. We’re a football team. So, that’s the bottom line.”
Yes, they are a football team, but sports are political and the team’s owner made it a political situation with his choice of words.
And, overall, the bottom line is so much bigger than that.
