Well what did you expect? You were playing soccer IN a Walmart...
That's what the thread title meant right? ...right?
But yes, as mentioned before, the only thing these people want is validation by getting a rise out of you. They want to be seen and and want to feel morally superior to you and they try to do that by trying to get a rise out of you. Responding in a negative or angry manner (even if their ignorance does make you angry) just proves to them they are more in control of there emotions and makes them feel "better than".
As to the Manager I give him lots of credit for doing his job, investigating, and being very polite about this it seems. I'm not sure it warrants a phone chain to his office or an OC rush, because it's his job to respond to every customer; even the crazy ones. Like the venerable PA Patriot said, it's their property, their rules. Sure we don't like it but we can't change it until we change the public's viewpoint from legal and free locations.
Being uneducated about firearms just means every firearm is seen as a snake; people are afraid of it even if the snake has no motivation to leave it's sunny rock. *so warmmmmmmm
* And seeing someone constantly escorted out of a store just influences the viewers of the event, albeit unconciously, that carrying a weapon is against the rules and must be wrong.
To truely educate one must be calm and collected and let the questioners approch you so they feel in control and can learn at their speed, not yours. Never in my life has someone changed my mind by arguing with me, but I have had my mind changed by listening to someones calm/logical explanations, and then researching them myself.