Guns: Starbucks in the crossfire

Do you like your coffee with or without a Glock semi-automatic pistol? asked Derrick Jackson in The Boston Globe. If you’re a patron of Starbucks, you may have to make that decision, now that gun-rights activists have launched a new campaign to publicize their right to bear arms by openly carrying their weapons in public. Some major retailers responded to this attempt to return the country to the “Wild West” by banning guns on their premises, so as not to terrify children and other patrons, but Starbucks took the coward’s way out. The coffee giant issued a whimpering statement begging not to be dragged “into the middle of this divisive issue,” and said it would respect laws that make open carrying legal in 43 states. As a result, some Starbucks stores are now full of gleeful gun owners sipping Ventis and nibbling vanilla scones while “flaunting their firearms.”

That’s not just a protest—it’s a public service, said the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader in an editorial. By allowing guns in their coffee shops, Starbucks is not only honoring its customers’ constitutional right to bear arms—it is actively protecting their safety. It was only four months ago, let’s not forget, that four police officers were gunned down in a Washington state coffee shop before they had time to draw their own weapons. Had other customers been armed, they could have fired on the shooter and saved lives. “How many more innocent deaths will it take before the irrational anti-gun movement sees that?” It’s simple common sense, said Nick Gillespie in Reason.com. “An armed society is a polite society.”

There’s nothing polite about brandishing weapons in public, said Cynthia Tucker in AJC.com. Where I grew up, in rural Alabama, lots of people—including my father—owned guns and hunted. But they never would have carried a rifle or a handgun into a store or Sunday worship service. Members of this new breed of “Second Amendment absolutists” are “just itching for a confrontation,” which is why they also showed up with guns last summer at town hall meetings and even a speech by President Obama. If their goal is to convince me how much safer I’d feel in a fully armed society, said Nicole Brodeur in The Seattle Times, it’s not working. Undoubtedly, some gun owners are responsible, law-abiding citizens. But some are just crazy. How are the rest of us supposed to know which is which?

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up