Shooters Grill — Colorado GOP Representative Lauren Boebert’s restaurant in Rifle, Colorado — shut down this week. Last month, Milken Enterprises — the new owner of the building that housed Shooters Grill — informed Boebert they wouldn’t be renewing her lease. Shooters Grill operated since May 2013.
Servers at the restaurant carried firearms after an incident in which a man was alleged to have been beaten to death outside the premises, although the victim actually died of a methamphetamine overdose. “We were like a family,” Boebert remarked of the restaurant. “I would say Shooters, for any employee, was their life. We lived and breathed it every single day. They were a part of this culture and brand that we created in Rifle, and there was a lot of pride with that.” Rifle is in Boebert’s Congressional district, where she recently won the GOP primary for her seat against state Rep. Don Coram. Boebert indicated she called Milken to push back against their resistance to renewing her lease, but the Congresswoman was unsuccessful. She said “there wasn’t really much wiggle room or anywhere to compromise unless we bought the building ourselves.”
“Within the next two hours, I had reporters reaching out to me asking me if this was true and if we were being evicted,” the Congresswoman remarked. “I said, ‘Well, we’re not being evicted. The lease is not being renewed — that’s a big difference.’” Yet, the end result is the same: the new building owner was effectively mandating Boebert’s exit from the premises. It seems as though she heard from reporters very soon after getting in touch with Milken, which itself came rather promptly after getting the letter from the company informing her of their decision. It’s unclear how reporters might have first become aware of the decision by Milken.
There’s no commitment from Boebert for a continuation of the brand that was established at Shooters Grill, but she indicated some kind of new iteration of her restaurant was a possibility. “We would just dramatically scale it back, because, obviously, we’re not in our building,” the Congresswoman said. “It may look like a Shooters coffee shop with pastries and some easy breakfast sandwiches and merchandise.” Meanwhile, Boebert has distinguished herself during her currently unfolding first term in Congress as one of the GOP members seemingly more interested in cultivating a public persona than legislating. Just look at her Twitter feed. “You cannot legislate away evil,” Boebert proclaimed after a recent school shooting in Texas, implicitly rebutting attempts to enact basic gun safety measures. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) remarked in response that Boebert should “just quit” if she’s not inclined to do her job — legislating.
“Why even be in Congress if you don’t believe in doing your job?” Ocasio-Cortez asked in response to Boebert. “Just quit and let someone who actually gives a damn do it instead of acting like a useless piece of furniture when babies are shot with AR15s that we let teen boys impulse buy before they can legally have a beer.” Boebert has also shown support for conspiracy theories about the integrity of the last presidential election.
