Trump supporter 'threatens' restaurant staff with gun after being asked to put on a mask

A man wearing a Donald Trump 'Make America Great Again' cap reportedly threatened staff at a restaurant in Kansas with a gun after he was asked to wear a mask.

The unidentified man entered RJ's Bob-Be-Que Shack in Mission, Kansas earlier this month but was not wearing a face covering which is now a mandatory requirement in the state after Democratic governor Laura Kelly signed an executive order on 29 June.

When the man was asked if he would kindly put on a mask by 17-year-old employee Arlo Kinsey, he told the teenager that he had been granted an exemption by the governor and then proceeded to lift up his shirt to show that he was carrying a gun. Kinsey said he saw this as a threat and feared that the man was going to shoot him.

Speaking to theKansas City Starhe said:

All we're asking is that you wear a mask for a couple of minutes. We could have taken your order outside if you didn't want to. But you go into an air-conditioned area without a mask on, and if I tell you to wear one, you're going to shoot me? Wow. I make $8.50 an hour, plus tips—for this?

After Kinsey had told the owner of the establishment, Bob Palmgren, what had happened Palmgren went out to the front of the restaurant to confront the man and ended up in an argument with him. Palmgren, who is also a Trump supporter, told the local paper:

Everybody's got problems. But it doesn't make a difference. You don't have a mask on.... Your gun's not going to kill coronavirus, now get the hell out of here.

He added:

I get people in here that don't want to [wear a mask] and think that we're a small place so we won't enforce it or something. But if everybody gets sick, then I'm out of business. So I've got to enforce these rules.

The man reportedly left the restaurant before he could be identified and it was unclear if CCTV was able to capture his likeliness in time.

The Kansas City Star states that rumours had begun to circulate on social media amongst gun groups that anyone firearm laws prevented anyone carrying a gun from wearing a mask in the state but no such law exists anywhere in the United States.

Mission, which is in Johnson County has the highest number of Covid-19 related deaths in Kansas and as of 13 July, was just 10 cases away from having the highest numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases in the entire state, with 3,160.