Guns don’t win. Not especially at the biggest CrossFit competition in the world.
After winners of the Reebok CrossFit Games last weekend were awarded cash prizes totalling more than $USD2 million and also a brand new Glock, two of Reebok’s flagship stores were overrun with protestors. The organisers of the games had announced the guns as prizes the week before much to the furore of the worldwide audience.

With gun ownership being a controversial social issue in the United States, the news wasn’t well received by the American public either. Members of Gays Against Guns and New Yorkers Against Gun Violence took to the sidewalks at the Reebok stores with placards calling for the sponsors to drop the games in protest.

“It is an outrage that an organization like CrossFit Reebok, who purport to be about health and fitness, are giving away a weapon of death and destruction as a prize,” said New Yorkers Against Gun Violence Executive Director, Leah Gunn Barrett, to the New York Daily News.

“Glocks should not be glamorized and should not be given away as a prize,” Public Advocate Letitia James said at the protest.

CrossFit Games Director, Dave Castro, isn’t a stranger to controversy, but the decision to make a gun a prize at a time when gun control is an important social issue was argued as tone deaf. In this case, CrossFit as a brand was not greatly affected, but instead, the protests were directed towards their apparel partner.

Source: NY Daily News