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Jersey Mike’s Subs issued an apology after a joke the popular sub shop made on social media went awry.
What are the details?
A photo of an armed Jersey Mike’s customer — who remains unidentified — went viral over the weekend after gun control activist Travis Akers shared it to Twitter.
The customer can be seen in line at one of the franchise’s sandwich shops, visibly armed with two guns.
Akers captioned the image, “This man is brandishing two firearms, one of which is not retained properly. I could easily take that gun from him and shoot him, and take the other gun, all within 3 seconds. If you can’t carry safely, you shouldn’t be allowed to carry.”
A variety of social media users chimed in, expressing their outrage that the company permits open-carry in its stores.
Two such entities include March for Our Lives and Fred Guttenberg, a gun control activist whose daughter was killed in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida.
“As most who follow me know, my daughter was a victim of gun violence,” Guttenberg tweeted. “@jerseymikes, I will never eat in one of your restaurants again. Mocking the desire of customers to be safe when eating is a bad idea. Thankfully, the laws are not up to you.”
He shared the original photo and added, “Here is a photo of the customer that started this. @jerseymikes should ban open carry in their restaurants and here is why. This customer was to [sic] incompetent to even properly secure this weapon and @jerseymikes turn [sic] that into a joke. Somebody could have died because of this.”
The March for Our Lives organization tweeted, “As long as you allow open carry in your stores, we’ll make sure to grab a sub @subway any day of the week.”
Apparently not wanting to wade into politics or legislation, the chain fired back with a glib joke in an apparent attempt to turn the conversation away from the topic of guns.
“If the laws were up to us, we’d make it so everyone had to eat Jersey Mike’s Subs on Sundays,” the since-deleted tweet read.
Akers took a screenshot of the offending joke and shared it to Twitter, where it garnered further controversy.
He wrote, “I asked @jerseymikes for a public apology after replying with jokes about unsafe open carry in their stores. I also let them know if they did not reconsider their poor taste in humor & delete their tweets, that we would bring media attention.”
The company issued an apology for the joke on Monday night, but activists are still calling for a boycott of the eatery until its policies are changed.
“Thank you,” the company tweeted about the social media melee. “We apologize. We always want to do better.”
(H/T: Business Insider)
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