D.S. Arms, the well-known manufacturer of FAL and AR-15 rifles, was booted from Wizard World Comic-Con as a result of a misunderstanding and public pressure earlier this month. The gun manufacturer had already purchased the booth space and was all set up to display their line of replica weapons to sell to cosplayers as props when they were informed 40 minutes prior to the show that they would not be allowed to attend the show.

D.S.Arms released a statement that outlines the entire ordeal pretty clearly. You can read it below:

STATEMENT FROM D.S. ARMS

Re: Wizard World, Comic Con, Rosemont IL.

We know firearms and personal protection is a divisive issue. Due to pressures from online bloggers and a few uneducated antigun individuals along with unknown forces behind the scenes – we were denied access to our booth area for this event. We had already set up our booth display Wednesday the day before the start of the show in our contracted for booth space. We arrived Thursday with all of our equipment for the show and were met there by show staff and security. They stated they would not let us complete the setup of our display and wouldn’t let us know a reason why, however, the reason slipped out of one show officials mouth, “you are a gun dealer”. While a company like Wizard World may be able to decide who it wants at its shows – it cannot without serious consequences decide to break the contract that they made with us. We were approved multiple times over a period of months to do this show by the show management at Wizard World. They publically flip-flopped 4 times concerning our attendance after pressure from online bloggers. Only the day before they had confirmed with us that our attendance was still authorized. Then to add insult to injury, Wizard World “disinvited” us in person at 2:20 PM, literally only 40 minutes before the show was to start at 3:00 PM. Admittedly, we offer for sale both replica and real firearms. We are also a licensed manufacturer and importer of legal firearms. However, due to our agreement with Wizard World and most importantly to remain in compliance with federal and state laws, we could not sell any real firearms at the Comic Con show, regardless of the misinformation peddled by the online bloggers. The truth is that we never intended to sell firearms at the show – and Wizard World knew this. A large amount of effort and expense on our part went into this event. Due to breach of contract on the show’s side we regret that you could not see what we had to display there. We are certain our booth would have been the most popular one in the entire show besides actual celebrities. We view this as another attack on all of our 1st and 2nd Amendment rights. These types of underhanded attacks will continue until the silent majority breaks its silence. Until then we will continue to fight the good fight – alone if necessary! Your friends at D.S. Arms.

Without getting too political on the subject it isn’t too hard to see what happened to exclude the guys and gals over at D.S. Arms from the show. It appears that the show staff received quite a lot of pressure from bloggers and uneducated individuals about their being a gun dealer at the show and made the decision after much wavering to disallow the sale of replica weapons by an actual gun manufacturer.

The D.S. Arms booth remained unoccupied for about 90 minutes before a Wizard World staff member noticed the table cover and removed it.

Courtesy of Cheryl V. Jackson / Chicago Tribune

We are not a political blog here by any means and I am not a politicly focused person, but I find that when uninformed opinion is driven by political ideals it makes it very hard to have a meaningful conversation about anything. It is unfortunate that D.S. Arms opportunity to attend the show and sell some of their quality replicas to cosplayers was interrupted by bad opinions and power wielding bloggers.

If you want to read more about the ordeal you can check out an article in the Chicago Tribune or visit the D.S. Arms website.