Day After ‘Guns Everywhere’ Law, Target Says Guns And ‘Family Friendly Shopping’ Don’t Mix

Superstore giant Target is asking gun lovers to keep the object of their affect at home, just one day after a “guns everywhere” open-carry law goes into effect. 

Maybe it’s just coincidence, but one day after Georgia’s “guns everywhere” law went into effect, the $73 billion Target corporation (NYSE:TGT) is joining many other national retailers who have already asked gun owners to not bring guns into their stores. 

Calling it a “complex issue,” interim CEO John Mulligan acknowledges “there has been a debate about whether guests in communities that permit ‘open carry’ should be allowed to bring firearms into Target stores. He says that “starting today we will also respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target – even in communities where it is permitted by law.”

But Mulligan goes even further, strongly suggesting that guns in stores defeats Target’s “goal to create an atmosphere that is safe and inviting for our guests and team members.” And he concludes, “Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create.”

Target joins a list of retailers — including Starbucks, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Peet’s Coffee, AMC Theaters, California Pizza Kitchen, Toys R Us, and Disney World and Disney Land — that have asked customers to not bring guns into their environments, but have not banned them outright, probably for not wanting to have to enforce an actual ban.

Of course, this is just the latest shot, if you will, in the gun culture wars, but it’s a theme that continues to grow. Conservatives insist on imposing their lifestyles and points of view on America, and America fights back by saying, “No, that’s just too extreme — we’re going in the opposite direction.” 

Last summer, immediately after gun nuts insisted on a “Starbucks Appreciation Day” to “thank” the coffee giant for not banning guns, Starbucks asked all its customers to leave their guns at home, because the “presence of a weapon in our stores is unsettling and upsetting for many of our customers.”

And in May, after members of a Texas group calling itself Open Carry Tarrant County marched into their local Dallas-area Chipotle and scared customers half to death, Chipotle issued a statement not outright banning guns, but saying “we are respectfully asking that customers not bring guns into our restaurants.”

Meanwhile, this response to conservatives going overboard is evident in the same-sex marriage battle too. One has to wonder if it took bans on same-sex marriage — an extreme act by conservatives — to show America how offensive opposing marriage equality is. And it took federal judges striking down those bans to expand marriage to same-sex couples. Would marriage equality have happened later if the bans had not been there? One wonders.

 

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