John Ransom - 9/19/2013
Starbucks really knows who its customers are. And if you're not one of them, I guess you just don't count. For many people besides the good folks at Starbucks.
I can't tell you how the whole Starbucks gun controversy started. I lack sufficient brain cells to waste them on minutiae, trivia and events long forgotten, yet reported to us at the time with breathless drama by pretty blond men and women on TV.
But I know now how the controversy is going to end.
Pushy liberals are going to special plead marginal cases as they always do in order to try to curtail gun rights and laws established by federal, state and local governments.
Of course liberals and their cousins, aka moderates, will miss the point entirely. They always do. Getting the point would be far too messy. Then the next things you'd have to confront are possible solutions.
For Starbucks, however, cave-in to liberals is already complete.
Reports Reuters:
"We've seen the 'open carry' debate become increasingly uncivil and, in some cases, even threatening," [Starbucks CEO Howard] Schultz wrote, noting that "some anti-gun activists have also played a role in ratcheting up the rhetoric and friction," at times soliciting and confronting employees and patrons.
"We found ourselves in a position where advocates on both sides of the issue were using Starbucks as a staging ground for their own political position," said Schultz, who in the past has willingly waded into the public debate over the U.S. national debt and gay marriage.
Why a company would think they have to weigh in on any political position that doesn't directly affect their business is confusing to me.
Rule number one: Shut the hell up, Howard.
But then I'm confused why guns would make anyone nervous too, as was reported.
Being the child of someone who died from gun violence that the president likes to talk about, I can tell you that the gun had little to do with it.
Some people think that it's strange that I would feel this way. But while I acknowledge that people who have lost loved ones in a car accident might be a bit freaky about auto safety- deservedly so- if they refused to get into an automobile or broke out in a sweat by the mere sight of a car, we'd all agree that they should get some cognitive therapy to help them past the difficulty.
People's reactions to guns are emotional, you see, not logical. Thus you can see why Liberals, who have to bother the rest of us with how they feel all the time, make it a cornerstone of their belief system.
Feelings, nothing more than feelings, trying to forget my feeeeelings of guuuuuns.
I'm guessing that when confronted by a criminal, most people would feel pretty good about having a gun.
If not their own gun, then how about someone near at hand who knows how to shoot?
Perhaps that's why we have people with guns at facilities like the Washington Navy Yard, the White House, courthouses and football games.
They provide protection to the rest of the people who don't want, or too often, are not allowed to carry guns.
To be clear, at least in Colorado, where I live, Starbucks can't prevent anyone from carrying a gun openly in their stores, as long as such open carry complies with state laws.
They can ask them to leave. But they have already said that they won't do that.
It's rather stupid then for the company to waffle and prevaricate as if they are changing a policy. It's a paper policy, a policy that can't be enforced.
It's kind of like immigration laws for Democrats.
I know it makes liberals feel better when they ban guns while sipping lattes. But it will have little effect on gun violence, unless of course one wants to argue that we should ban all guns under all circumstances outside of the military or law enforcement purposes.
Because if you really want to have an effect on gun violence, there are two relatively small groups in society we should target, both of which are even more unpopular with liberals and the Obama administration than guns are.
Three out of every 4 gun-related deaths in the country come from suicides. Statistics complied by the Center for Disease Control show that in 2010 the suicide rates by white men bottomed out at the ages of 30-35 at 1.172 per 10,000 and then climb every five years until they reach a high of 3.957 per 10,000 for men 85 years of age and older.
Is Obama interested on Old White Men? Naw. Never mentions them with gun violence.
Then there is Young Black Men.
Is Obama interested? Nope.
Homicide or Legal Intervention deaths caused by guns were an astonishing 8.593 per 10,000 deaths for black men aged 20-24. It doesn't get much better for black men either relative to whites no matter what the age.
You want to really combat gun deaths? You want to do something revolutionary, you want to save lives? Then start with the 6 million young, at-risk black men between the ages of 15 and 39. Or try doing something for the 10 million old, white men who are at higher risk of gun-induced suicide.
There are steps besides taking away guns and giving speeches and fundraising that would be very effective at reducing gun violence.
Liberals, of course, will take those steps' just as soon as young black men and old, white men form a union or a PAC.
Until then, enjoy your $5 cup of coffee.
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