US firearms firm halts sale of yellow stars reading ‘Gun Owner’

A gun parts business in a suburb of St. Louis said it will no longer sell a yellow patch in the shape of a Jewish star that reads “Gun Owner.”

The star-shaped patches are patterned after the yellow stars Jews were required to wear under Nazi rule.

The stars were sold online by a business specialising in gun parts and gear in St. Peters, Missouri. They were originally created by Indiana patch seller Violent Little Machine Shop, and meant to suggest that gun owners, like Jews during the Holocaust, were being persecuted by the government.

The patches were popular during the Obama administration, the River Front Times reported.

Gun parts dealer TJ Kirgin told the River Front Times he decided to stop selling the stars because they are no longer relevant under a Republican president and Congress that opposes many restrictions on gun ownership. He noted that there also were “religious implications.”

“We have removed the patch from our site and our store and are sending our inventory back to Violent Little Machine Shop,” Kirgin wrote in an email to the news site. “We will not make a habit out of removing products simply because they offend someone, however we are making an exception in this situation due to the religious implications and because the patch is in fact no longer relevant under the Trump Administration.”