Dallas Restaurant In Hot Water After 'Controversial' Move to Add Gun Regulation Message on Receipts
A popular Dallas restaurant finds itself on the receiving end of shooting threats after National Rifle Association warned its supporters to stay away from the eatery.
"We've had people calling and say they're going to shoot the place up, one that implied he would be burning us down today. Ridiculous people," Joe Groves, who owns the restaurant in question Ellen's, revealed to Buzzfeed News.
With the NRA convention being held in Dallas, Groves wanted to take the opportunity to start a conversation about gun regulation. The restaurant is just a few blocks away from a shooting in 2016 that left five people dead.
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For his efforts, Groves placed a message on the bottom of his restaurant receipts on Friday that read, "A portion of this week's proceeds will be donated to organizations dedicated to implementing reasonable and effective gun regulations."
After a customer remarked that the words might be misinterpreted, he made a slight adjustment by adding "that protect citizen's 2nd Amendment rights and also help reduce needless gun violence" at the end.
The NRA caught wind of what Ellen's was doing and immediately tweeted a picture of one of the receipts with the message and warned its followers not to go there.
It did not take long for negative reviews to flood the restaurant. The Twitter and Facebook page of the Ellen's was inundated with angry messages while its Yelp page received more than 50 one-star reviews.
Groves said that even though nothing about the message indicated their desire to limit Second Amendment rights, this is how it is being portrayed.
"They're so touchy about that, any conversation is trying to take away their guns. It's the opposite of that," Groves argued.
The restaurant then released a lengthy statement to make a clarification, emphasizing that they only wanted to find "common ground" and like everyone else, they simply hope for the senseless gun violence to end.
"What was not expected was that those two words -- reasonable and effective -- would be misinterpreted as our support for gun control. The mistake was an honest one. The opposite is true," the statement read.
"We support the Constitution, including the 2nd Amendment, 100 percent. And like the NRA, we also support finding solutions to the senseless killings that happen much too frequently. We believe those two things are completely compatible," they continued.
Although their receipts have gone viral, the restaurant believes that their approach is not as controversial as it seems, if not at all. They believe that it is "the American way of dealing with problems."
The folks behind Ellen's believe that if "we breathe, calm down, and listen to one another," they might arrive at a solution that will make both camps happy.
In the same interview, Groves reiterated that he is all about protecting the Second Amendment while also keeping people safe and that he was only hoping to find a way to be able to do both.
While the negative reviews came around so quickly, Groves said that there hasn't been any tangible impact yet on the sales of the restaurant.
