Bob Campbell, the organizer of a gun show that took place last weekend in Sioux Falls, N.D., described how appalled he was when he saw the target one of his vendors was selling, KSFY reports. The target was the silhouette of a man—presumably an African American with full lips—frozen in a running motion, with the words “Official Runnin’ N—ger Target” emblazoned across the top.
“I take pride in the work I do, and the quality of the show that I put out, and I’m very disappointed and disgusted to see what was on that table,” Campbell told KSFY.
KSFY has video footage of one of its news photographers confronting the vendor who was selling the racist target.
“Why are those on there?” the KSFY photographer asked the vendor.
“Why aren’t they? They’re just targets,” the vendor, who refused to give his name to KSFY, responded.
“Aren’t they offensive in nature?” the photographer retorted.
“To who?” the vendor asked. “Are you Negro?”
“You know there are some black people, and then there are some Negroes,” the vendor, who seems to fancy himself an expert in Negro-ology, argued. The vendor then went on to tell the photographer that he sold about 500 of the targets at the gun show over the weekend.
Gun-show organizers explained that although they prescreen the products that vendors sell at the show, it’s hard to keep track of which products vendors decide to sell during the actual show, which is why this particular vendor was able to sell his racist product.
“People put out one thing. Later they’ll change and will pull out another thing,” Daethal Dockter, a member of the gun show’s board of directors, explained.
“I was not aware that it was there, or it would have been gone,” Campbell said.
“We don’t condone such things at our shows,” Dockter reiterated.
According to KSFY, the vendor is now banned from Campbell’s gun show, and Campbell said that he suspects the vendor will be banned from other local shows, too.
Read more at KSFY.