Anne Verrill, center, at Grace, her restaurant in Portland, Maine. In a Facebook post, she said anyone who owned a rifle similar to the one used in the attack in Orlando, Florida — or even supported the right to own one for private use — was not welcome at her two restaurants.

PORTLAND, Maine. — After a gunman killed 49 people in June at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Anne Verrill, a prominent Maine restaurateur, swung through a range of familiar emotions: frustration, anger, helplessness.

She reflected, too, on her typical response to the nation’s litany of gun massacres.

“We write Facebook posts, we copy and paste, and we talk about it with people who basically agree with us,” Verrill, 38, said the other day. “We’ve never really done anything outside the box with regard to gun control.”

But to her, the slaughter in Orlando was different. It was the deadliest mass public shooting in American history. Verrill wanted to do something she thought might make a difference and set an example for her children.


So she again turned to the universal soapbox of Facebook. This time she took a stand, knowing it could hurt her business in a pro-gun, largely rural state, where hunting and target practice are immensely popular and where the political schisms run deep.

She wrote that anyone who owned a high-powered semi-automatic rifle similar to the one used in Orlando was not welcome in either of her two restaurants. That was not all: She would not welcome anyone who merely supported the idea of owning such a weapon.

As the battle over gun rights rages in the political arena, a small but growing number of restaurants are enforcing their own rules to try to counteract the wave of gun violence that has erupted in places like Newtown, Connecticut; San Bernardino, California; and Charleston, South Carolina.

Some chains have declared themselves gun-free zones, often in response to state “open carry” laws that allow people to take unconcealed firearms into establishments like restaurants, including those that serve alcohol.

In 2013, Starbucks was one of the first chains to ask that its customers leave their firearms at home. Since then, Chipotle, Chili’s, Panera Bread and others have joined the list. In Texas, an open carry law that went into effect in January also allowed businesses to opt out, prompting several restaurants across the state to do so.


Gun rights advocates, who believe not only in the right to bear arms but also that carrying them in public makes them safer, have staked out their ground, too. In Texas, at least one barbecue restaurant offers discounts to diners who show up with their weapons. The website of Gun Owners of Maine, an advocacy group, carries a list of “gun-unfriendly businesses,” including Verrill’s restaurants: Grace, a renovated 1856 Gothic Revival church in Portland, and the Foreside Tavern, in nearby Falmouth.

Anne Verrill at Grace.

Verrill went a step further than most, spurning those who support the right to own a particularly lethal type of weapon — whether they own one or not.

She wrote on Facebook in mid-June, “If you own this gun, or you condone the ownership of this gun for private use, you may no longer enter either of my restaurants, because the only thing I want to teach my children is love.” She included a picture of an AR-15, similar to the gun used in Orlando.

“I cannot, in good conscience, accept anyone inside of my restaurants who believes that this is OK,” she wrote.

Supporters of gun rights vented their fury toward Verrill on social media. They called for a boycott of her restaurants and posted hundreds of negative online reviews of Grace, an upscale establishment that has been called one of the best restaurants in Maine — and, with its vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows, one of the most visually striking. They took particular umbrage at her effort to weed out patrons based on their beliefs.


The backlash on social media quickly led her to delete the Facebook post. She said she stood by her views but the post had become a platform for haters.

In a follow-up post, she explained that she did not want to take away the guns of responsible owners, but that “I want people to not have the power to own weapons of war.”

Her critics migrated to that post. “It’s far too late to hide your moronic post from earlier,” one commenter wrote. “Your stupidity has since gone viral and your rating on Facebook has plummeted.”

Looking back now, Verrill said in an interview, she wishes she had worded her original post differently because it gave critics an opening to question how exactly she would bar people for their beliefs — a distraction from her main point about the horror of gun violence. Many said she was behaving no differently from a baker who would not make a cake for a same-sex wedding, but she rejected that analogy.

“Gun owners are not a protected class,” she said. “Owning a gun is a choice. It bears literally no resemblance to the biological nature of the color of your skin or your sexual orientation.”

Still, trying to bar people based on their beliefs would most likely draw a legal challenge.

Seven weeks after her original post, things have stabilized, Verrill said. She has not lost any business, she said, and the tourist season is in full swing. While the attacks from people across the country surprised her, so did the extent of the support.

Recent diners included Erica Smegielski, the daughter of Dawn Hochsprung, the principal who was killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

And they included Dan and Sue Fogel, tourists from North Carolina who visited Grace for dinner last week after their Uber driver recommended it. They were unaware of Verrill’s stance on guns, but once they learned about it, they were pleased to be dining there.

“What we’re doing on guns isn’t working, and we have to do something different,” said Dan Fogel, 69, a college professor.

Eric Goldberg, 43, an insurance executive from New York who took his family to Grace after his wife read a review, was more ambivalent.

“While I admire the owner for trying to address an issue she cares about, I am not comfortable with business owners deciding who to serve based on their beliefs,” he said.

In all the hubbub over her stance, Verrill was surprised that members of a nearby gun club wanted to speak to her in person.

Tammy Walter, president of the Spurwink Rod & Gun Club in Cape Elizabeth, said she and three others had met with Verrill at her restaurant in early July and talked for 90 minutes. Neither side changed the other’s opinion, but both said the discussion had been civil.

Walter said in an interview that she had apologized for writing a fake restaurant review that gave Grace zero stars. But, she added, she wanted Verrill to understand that she had offended responsible gun owners by lumping them in the same category as the Orlando gunman.

Walter also said she would like to go back to the restaurant sometime for dinner. When told of Walter’s desire, Verrill said that she worried that such a visit would be more of a publicity stunt and that her impulse would be to ask her to leave.

But Verrill added: “If I saw her in her cardigan and pearls sitting at a table, I don’t think I would have the heart to ask her to get up and leave. And I guess that is the crux of taking a big stand in a small community.”