The organizer’s of the Run’n’Gun biathlon decided to promote their upcoming event  by posing with a rainbow flag, holding rifles and explaining that the rainbow flag is their new target.

According to the Facebook post, the rainbow flags are “new high visibility targets on the 500 yard range” for these guys.

The flag being used as a target is overtly offensive. Yet, the organizers tried to play it off as a joke. A really, really, poorly chosen, offensive, dangerous joke.

“You could definitely tell by reading the comments that they were trying to make a joke out of this,” said Troy Stevenson, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma. “But once again, it was going way too far and offending a lot of people and it was very threatening language.”

Watch the local news report from KFOR-TV: