Dealership’s Gun Promotion Creates Backlash

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Buy a car and get a lawnmower or handgun for free. It’s a promotion that’s caused quite the uproar for Cloquet Ford Chrysler Center.

Owner Al Birman said the dealership was flooded with, what he describes, mean calls from anti-gun advocates.

Birman told FOX 21’s Dan Hanger he stands by the Second Amendment but was forced to pull the ad to protect his employees.

Here’s reaction from both sides.

“First and foremost, whether it’s a dealership or a business, you don’t want to offend anybody. But you also don’t want to be so compliant that you give up your right to the Second Amendment,” explained Birman.

“This has nothing to do with being anti-gun or anti Second Amendment. This is about being pro safety and to us. Giving away a deadly weapon — as gun — as a promotion to get people to come in to buy cars was the wrong message to send,” explained Joan Peterson with the Northland Brady Campaign and Protect Minnesota.

Meanwhile, the ad may be gone but the dealership says it will still offer the gun-car promotion through the end of the month of May.