Join ‘Drink at Starbucks’ Saturday

In case you missed it, there’s a boycott scheduled for today. A Newtown group is encouraging people to not go to Starbucks today, because the corporation has stated that they are going to follow the local laws for their respective stores when it comes to guns. While the people of Newtown obviously did suffer through a horrific tragedy, that was due to someone breaking existing gun laws in Connecticut. It might make people feel a little better to try to force a company to prohibit guns, but just like anywhere else, such a rule would be ignored by the people that are most likely to decide to fire a weapon in a coffee shop – criminals.

Of course the organizers started talking about law enforcement statistics on shooting – the relatively low percentage of times that police officers actually end up hitting their targets in a situation where they fire their weapons. Of course that ignores the fact that by the time police officers are using their weapons, criminals aren’t typically considered “close range” targets. A properly trained citizen carrying a firearm legally is far more likely to end up being in a position to stop a criminal, because they’re not in a uniform – a criminal may not expect the person is armed, and more importantly, able to stop them by firing. But, we already know this. The group “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America” obviously doesn’t understand the concept that when you stop law-abiding citizens from being armed, the only people that will have guns are the criminals and the police. That leaves everyone else in the crossfire between them.

As for today, if you’re opposed to having a group force Starbucks to adopt a policy that doesn’t respect local gun laws, please do stop by and have some coffee. Boycotts are a wonderful tool, but so is showing support of a company. And yes, if you can, do ask to see the manager when you’re in that Starbucks location, and say that you’re buying from that store today because you support their company policy of abiding by the local gun laws.