Guns and Coffee

Again from IMAO, this time Frank weighs in:

It’s a measure of the civility in this country that no ones seems to fear constantly pissing off the people who own lots of guns. 

So the policy at Starbucks is that while they won’t stop you from carrying a gun, they won’t say hello to your little friend. 

I don’t get the Starbucks thing; how can you be threatened by a guy drinking a pumpkin spice latte even if he is openly carrying a gun? 

Hope this goes without being said, but people who will honor polite requests to not carry a firearm are not the ones you need to worry about.

A few thoughts from me.

There seems to be a misunderstanding as to why we are carrying guns.  It is not generally to make a political point, although those people do exist.  Most of the people I know who carry guns do so to take personal responsibility for their own and their family's safety.  The courts have ruled numerous times that the police have no legal obligation to protect you.  Their job is to protect society as a whole.  If  you get shot by a mugger, they are tasked with finding the mugger and locking him up to protect everyone else.  You are on your own until the mugger actually does something.

That being said, we are not carrying to Starbucks to make a political point, except to the extent that we are spending our money at a business which chose not to discriminate against us.  Most of us know that Starbucks was never "pro gun".  They didn't want to be involved in a political issue that the left forced on them.  Unfortunately, they have now embraced the anti-gun position completely.  To state, as Howard Shultz did, that their customers will be safer if people don't bring their guns in to their stores flies in the face of the evidence of every mass shooting in history.  Mass shooters go places where they will be able to do their thing with the least amount of interference.  They don't go to police stations, they don't go to gun shows, because there are people there who will stop them.  Instead they exclusively go to "gun free zones" because law abiding people generally obey the law.  The crazy nutball knows that there are unlikely to be armed people of any sort at a school, a mall, a federal building, in otherwords, anywhere that guns have been banned for the law abiding.

Some in the gun rights community have suggested that it isn't a big deal to just leave your gun in your car when you go into Starbucks.  They are missing the point.  We do not carry guns to make a political statement, we carry guns because we are responsible for ourselves.  Ask Suzanna Hupp, from Killean Texas, whether leaving your gun in the car is a good option. Both her parents died when a psychotic madman killed 23 people, including her parents, in a restaurant in Killean.  She had left her gun in her car because Texas law at that time prohibited carry of a firearm into a restaurant.

Gun owners now have a choice to make.  The left made Starbucks a household name in the battle for gun rights by protesting peaceful, law abiding citizens who were trying to buy a cup of coffee.  Starbucks caved.  They have done nothing to make their customers safer, in fact the opposite is probably true.  They have now alienated a good percentage of their customer base.  It will remain to be seen whether gun owners will walk away and buy their coffee elsewhere.  The left certainly didn't when they were protesting.  I don't see this benefiting Starbucks in any way.