Texas Motor Speedway Race Winners To Continue to get Six Shooters

Graham Rahal gets his guns in 2016 in Texas

Texas Motor Speedway's tradition of race winners "firing off six shooters in Victory Lane will continue" when the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series returns to the track in April, according to John Henry of the Ft. Worth STAR-TELEGRAM.

TMS President Eddie Gossage "called off the tradition at the November race out of respect for 26 people killed in a mass shooting near San Antonio" that occurred on the same day as the AAA Texas 500. Gossage said, “I just thought ‘this isn’t the thing to do today.’

It was too close to us." But he said the six-shooters are "not any kind of political statement or anything like that." Gossage: "They’re just a silly stereotypical Texas cowboy celebration. That’s all they are." He noted a lot of colleges "shoot guns or cannons" at kickoff or when they score a touchdown.

Gossage added, "You have an agenda if you’re trying to connect the dots between shooting blanks in the air and going ‘woo, hoo,’ and to some social comment on gun control and gun rights. That’s just silly" Ft. Worth STAR-TELEGRAM