As naïve as it now sounds, it was widely predicted, in the
wake of the Sandy Hook mass murder, that America would have a
serious debate/discussion about gun laws. That hasn't happened,
of course. What
has
happened is that the discussion has moved into the private
sector. Certain proponents of gun rights (sometimes called the
open carry movement) have been selectively testing the policies
of large companies by heading to their locations en masse, guns
in hand.
In "open carry" states, it is absolutely legal to carry a gun,
so long as that gun is in plain sight. In practice, the exact
boundary of the right to carry a gun in public is less easily
defined, as carrying a firearm, even in an open carry state, may
be a crime if doing so results in a breach of the peace, or if
the carrier is intoxicated. It is similarly difficult to define
what constitutes a beach of the peace, and in fact, the
determination that the peace has been breached always requires a
police officer to make a judgement call.
It seems the exact location of that boundary will likely
remain a mystery, for now, because most recently, gun rights
advocates have been running afoul not of the law, but of
corporate policy. There is little question that businesses and
restaurants can ban the carrying of guns on their own premises if
they wish to, so it seems as though the real question on gun
rights advocates' minds was
would they?
The answer appears to be
yes
, though a polite yes. Starbucks (sbux), Chipotle (
CMG
) and now Target (
TGT
) all quietly ignored their armed patrons at first, but
eventually asked customers to leave their guns at home. The
requests came amid mounting consumer pressure, and pressure from
groups such as Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America, which
prefer to spend their money in stores and restaurants frequented
exclusively by the unarmed.
It is entirely plausible to posit that the open carry movement
is seeking to make its point by causing companies to overreact,
thereby demonstrating that de facto erosion of gun rights is
ongoing and significant, but so far, no company has. It is also
possible that the group (or groups) is just trying to determine
which businesses share their passion so they, too, can spend
their money in an environment of their choosing.
There will almost certainly be calls to boycott Target as a
result of the company's decision today, and some of those calls
will almost certainly be made using hyperbolic language. Based on
the performance of SBUX and CMG stock in the weeks since they
declared their own "gun free" preferences, however, Target
doesn't appear to have any problems today that it didn't have
yesterday.
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Julian Close
has been a business writer since the first day of the
twenty-first century, having written for PRA
International and the United Nations Department of
Peacekeeping. He graduated from Davidson College in 1993
and received a Master of Arts in Teaching from Mary
Baldwin College in 2011. He became a stockbroker in 1993,
but now works for Fresh Brewed Media and uses his powers
only for good. You can see closing trades for all
Julian's long and short positions and track his long term
performance via twitter:
@JulianClose_MIC
.
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This article was originally published on
MarketIntelligeneCenter.com