Today’s “Skip Starbucks Saturday” was such a huge demonstration that no one heard about it. The group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is protesting Starbucks’ policy that allows customers to bring in loaded weapons in states where they are legally permitted to do so. USA Today reports:
“Many moms are unaware that if they take their children to Starbucks, their children may be standing next to a customer who has a loaded weapon,” says Shannon Watts, founder of the non-profit group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. She says the group hopes to gather 25,000 signatures to ban guns at all U.S. Starbucks stores. She hopes to personally present the signatures to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
The boycott is an attempt to place the world’s biggest coffee chain — which prides itself on consumer advocacy — in the middle of one of the nation’s hot-button social issues. … The boycott is a bid to force Starbucks to re-think its current policy, which it has previously said is gun-neutral, but which anti-gun groups have tagged as pro-gun.
Starbucks has been deemed as “pro-gun” by gun control groups because there are 43 states where state law permits carrying a firearm into a Starbucks — and the company allows them to do it. Since Starbucks is a private corporation, they can prohibit guns from their stores. However, they have chosen not to change their policy.
“Our long-standing stance has been to comply with local laws in the communities we serve,” says Starbucks spokesman Zack Hutson. … Hutson says Starbucks doesn’t want its stores to be used as “staging grounds” for either side of the issue. Even then, he says, “our policy is not changing.”
The move comes less than two weeks after gun rights advocates nationally sponsored a headline-grabbing “Starbucks Appreciation Day,” in which Starbucks customers toted guns into Starbucks stores, where permitted, including the Starbucks store in Newtown, Conn., which opted to close early that day. Critics dubbed the day “Bring Your Gun to Starbucks Day.”
Okay, so maybe someone should have thought ahead before the Newtown thing.
Starbucks’ gun policy is starting to attract attention from groups on both sides of the issue. Will Starbucks become the next big name chain to be pressured with boycotts to change some sort of position? This remains uncertain.
So Second Amendment supporters: now would be a good time to buy some coffee.