Anti-gun Group to Boycott Starbucks on St. Valentine’s Day - The New American

While it is highly unlikely you have a CCW when you visit Starbucks in NYC, unless of course you play golf with the Mayor in Bermuda, I urge you to buy coffee on Valentine's day with $2 bills to support Starbucks stance on gun rights.

Elliot Fineman (left), CEO of the National Gun Victims Action Council (NGAC) announced last Monday that its members will boycott Starbucks starting on St. Valentine’s Day to protest the company’s resistance to demands that they cease serving customers who may be carrying weapons, open or concealed. Its purpose, according to Fineman, is “to eliminate the risk of guns in public places and ultimately to bring sane gun laws to the U.S.” Fineman claims that his group is “a network of 14 million gun victims” and that his boycott is being supported by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, the United Church of Christ, the Fellowship of Reconciliation along with other secular groups that also support the anti-gun movement. Fineman said:

Starbucks allowing guns to be carried in thousands of their stores significantly increases everyone's risk of being a victim of gun violence. Open and concealed carry are among the reasons there are 12,000 gun homicides each year in the U.S. If we had England's gun laws we would expect 375 gun homicides each year—97% less than we have. England's gun laws are based on protecting public safety, ours on maximizing sales for the gun industry…

Our boycott will reduce Starbucks’ stock price by an amount no rational company would allow.

It was two years ago that the Brady Campaign launched a similar boycott of Starbucks that “failed miserably” according to Dave Stockman, senior editor of Gun Week. Noted Stockman: “Starbucks made it plain in 2010…that it [would] abide by local and state laws and [would] not discriminate against a certain class of customers. Many open carry advocates began patronizing Starbucks…as a show of support.”

Stockman asked NGAC rhetorically just how many incidents have there been in the history of Starbucks, which opened its first coffee house in 1971, involving a legally-armed citizen that resulted in criminal violence? Answer: not a single one. 

Perhaps a better question would be: how many customers spend time and money at Starbucks either because they support open carry or because they simply don’t mind “rubbing elbows with legally-armed citizens?” as Workman suggests. And just how much of an impact will NGAC’s boycott have on Starbucks’ bottom line?

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