Starbucks and Guns

For those of you who haven’t been following the hubbub here’s some basic info to give you an idea as to what’s been going on with Starbucks. For starters, not everyone knows the general laws surrounding carrying firearms. Here’s some background in the subject pertinent to the story at hand:

• Certain states allow openly carrying firearms, others do not.
• In open carry states you do not need a permit to carry a firearm, so long as it’s in no way concealed.
• Open carry states do require a background check for firearm purchases.
• Even in open carry states, businesses can chose whether or not to allow firearms on their premises.

So Starbucks has had a standing position on open carry that follows individual state’s laws and the company has never come out in favor of guns or against them. Even so, this has been taken by many pro-gun activists to mean that Starbucks supports guns in one way or another, leading to what they deemed Starbucks Appreciation Day on August 9th. On that day gun owners flocked to Starbucks locations all over the nation openly carrying their firearms to give business to what they saw as a pro-gun establishment. Some of the patrons even carried shotguns and assault rifles, not just handguns. This naturally created a media frenzy, prompting the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (an anti-gun group formed the day after the shootings at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut) to take a stand and demand Starbucks change their policy on patrons carrying weapons. The group started Skip Starbucks Sundays, where they protested outside of Starbucks locations and urged customers to boycott the company. After a month of debate and consideration Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz today publicly requested that gun owners no longer carry their firearms in any of the company’s locations. It, however, is not the new policy of Starbucks employees to throw out gun-carrying customers, or turn them away at the door, nor will signage be displayed in any locations stating this new “policy.”

There are going to be people on both sides who will be disappointed or angry, but we’re making a decision we think is in the best interests of our customers, employees and the company. (…) Pro-gun activists have used our stores as a political stage for media events misleadingly called ‘Starbucks Appreciation Days’ that disingenuously portray Starbucks as a champion of open carry. (…) I want to make it very clear that Starbucks is not a policy maker and as a company we are not pro- or anti-gun.

I think those statements by Schultz go to show that he is just trying to take the most middle-of-the-road approach to this issue to protect his business, which is the most intelligent and savvy thing to do. I personally am a gun owner and I’m licensed to conceal a firearm, but I will continue to be a Starbucks customer. My stance on gun rights in America is a topic for a different day, and one can make whatever inferences they like based simply on the fact that I myself own firearms. But I am disappointed in gun activists and fellow gun owners who got sucked into sensationalizing a simple laissez-faire policy on firearms and turning it into a wing-nut debate. Any activist who toted their machine gun into a Starbucks to pose for pictures with a big, goofy grin while drinking the same kind of coffee drink a 13-year-old girl would order needs to look in the mirror if they want to know where to point the finger on this one. The Moms Demand Yadda Yadda Yadda group seems to base their entire argument on the idea that they as parents don’t feel safe in a Starbucks with their children if someone else in the establishment is carrying a firearm.

Much like smoking was once accepted on airplanes and drunk driving was abided without severe penalties, it is becoming passé for gun advocates – who may or may not have background checks, training or permits – to bring their weapons to public places. We thank and congratulate Starbucks for making this decision and for taking the safety of our children and families as seriously as mothers do. (…) Moms and women oversee nearly 80 percent of household spending, and Moms Demand Action is going to make sure they spend those dollars at businesses and institutions that respect and support the safety of our children and families.

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Blah Blah Blah, seems to have an almost elitist view towards people with children, doesn’t she? Can’t those kind of statements make it sound as though her organization believes people who aren’t parents have no concern for public safety? Also, I’d like to know where she’s talking about that allows people to purchase firearms with no background check whatsoever. My home state of Pennsylvania is an open carry state, but Pennsylvanians aren’t able to purchase firearms without a background check. People with felonies on their records, who have a histories of mental illness, or who are on probation or parole for even non-violent, summary offences are turned away at the gun stores.

Starbucks, like any other company of the sort, has had a few robberies in certain locations over the years, but not in numbers that stand out. Recently, however, there have been two instances of accidental discharges of weapons, both of which were carried in women’s purses. For one, that has nothing to do with open carry, because if the weapon is in a purse it’s legally considered concealed. Secondly, a handgun will generally only discharge when dropped if there is a round in the chamber and the safety is off. My point being that this doesn’t make an argument for the danger of guns as a whole, it makes an argument for the stupidity of some people. There are no laws against bad judgment in these cases, but is it fair to make policies deterring or eventually prohibiting something done safely by thousands based on the ignorance of two people? Moms and similar groups think that the only people who should be allowed to carry weapons in public are law enforcement personnel, assuming that they are the only people properly trained in how to handle firearms.

Some food for thought: what if you see someone carrying a gun who isn’t a police officer? Are they a danger with a weapon because they have no training? What if their father is or was a police officer who took them out as a child and taught them how to handle a gun? What if they have a relative in the military who taught them about firearm safety? Are police officers chosen by a supernatural being to do what they do because they have an innate understanding that no one else has of how to carry a gun without accidentally killing innocent people? On another note, what about those stories you hear about elderly people driving their cars through buildings? A few weeks ago in the Pittsburgh area a woman in her 80’s drove her car through the wall of a shoe store and injured a handful of people. Should cars be banned in Pittsburgh?

Make more inferences if you want, but I’m not a card-carrying NRA member who has assault rifles on my walls at home. I just think that issues like this are taken to radical extremes by people on both sides of the spectrum and all it does is create tensions where there are none. Gun violence is bad, obviously, but shouldn’t we focus more on why people want to kill others instead of trying to ban everything with which they can do it? Some people own guns because they’re in law enforcement, some people use them for hunting, sport shooting, some people carry them because they feel safer doing so being as they live in a bad neighborhood. There are lots of different reasons behind it. But the bottom line is that some people like guns, and some people just like attention.