The Brady Campaign vs. Starbucks’ gun-totin’ customers

I’m no Second Amendment zealot — I’ve said before that I think the right to bear arms probably isn’t such a hot idea in cities plagued by gun violence. Still, I think there’s a bit of disingenuousness in today’s LA Times op-ed piece by Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence — a call for Starbucks to ban from the premises any customers who lawfully enter the store with a gun on their person.

Here’s the laugh-out-loud untruth:

We are not asking Starbucks to take a position on America’s gun debate. We are asking it to establish a policy to protect its customers — including gun owners and employees — against the possibility that misused firearms carried into the stores by those The Times describes as “postmodern cowboy wannabes” could cause great harm. We are not pressuring Starbucks to take a position against anyone’s beliefs.

Oh, bullcrap.

I suppose this is narrowly true in the sense that the Brady Campaign isn’t asking Starbucks to send lobbyists far and wide to campaign for restrictive gun laws. But the Brady Campaign is clearly asking Starbucks to send a rather clear message about the state of gun laws in California and America — that they’re not restrictive enough to protect public safety, and that further steps must be taken by private businesses to do the job if politicians in Sacramento and D.C. won’t.

That’s clearly a political act, clearly the taking a position on America’s gun debate. And it is, in fact, a legitimate position for both the Brady Campaign and Starbucks — should it ever choose to do so — to take. But it is a not-very-good lie, an unnecessary lie, to pretend that such a position is somehow apolitical. The Brady Campaign should own its beliefs and positions instead of this pretense. Truth matters.