Moms Demand Action now targeting Kroger

[TheSpark]

I think the real victims here are the stores these groups, like MDA, go after. They feel pressured to address a subject that needs no addressing in which is a lose-lose situation for them.

If they support gun rights they will lose customers.
If they don't support gun rights they will lose customers.
If they remain quiet these groups keep at it and make them look bad causing them to lose customers.

Their best bet though is to not issue any statement or just say they will follow local laws in all of their establishments.

By the way

Moms Demand Action: 200,000 follows on facebook
NRA: 4 Million (almost)

 

[SteveM4A1]

I disagree with the open carry a rifle whackadoos that choose to make a political statement by carrying a rifle around while grocery shopping. I do carry my pistol, concealed but that isn't the point, when I go to Kroger. The people with the rifles are essentially poking the bear and forcing the issue, the same way they did with Target. Don't make a big issue out of it, and there won't be a big issue. MDA are just reacting in the way they would be expected to act in this situation. We've seen it before...I'm sure we'll see it again. They have their beliefs (stupid as they may be) and we have ours. We don't need to go around forcing the issue, as far as I know Kroger was silent on the issue of guns in their stores, now WE (as gun owners - ie: the open carry whackadoos) have forced the issue and brought up something that should have been left alone.

Sorry, but I disagree. We aren't forcing any issues as gun owners. OCT isn't forcing any issues on Kroger, Target, etc. Are they the ones calling these stores and petitioning them to change their policies? No, they are not. Place the blame where it belongs, and that is squarely on MDA and all of the other anti-gun crazies out there. They want to control your life. It doesn't matter whether they see someone doing an act they despise of or not; they don't ever want it to happen period! Even if there weren't individuals out there OCing rifles in businesses, MDA would still be going after them to change their policies to reflect their own ignorant beliefs.

 

[Streck-Fu]

I guess all the anti-smoking nannies got bored and have rallied to the anti-gun tribe. I wonder what they will try to ban/control next....

 

[cbhausen]

I think the real victims here are the stores these groups, like MDA, go after. They feel pressured to address a subject that needs no addressing in which is a lose-lose situation for them.

If they support gun rights they will lose customers.
If they don't support gun rights they will lose customers.
If they remain quiet these groups keep at it and make them look bad causing them to lose customers.

Their best bet though is to not issue any statement or just say they will follow local laws in all of their establishments.

By the way

Moms Demand Action: 200,000 follows on facebook
NRA: 4 Million (almost)

I made sure to remind them of this in the comments.

 

[printcraft]

Kroger best not issue a statement. I spend quite a bit of money there.

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Anything beyond..... "We follow the law as written in Indiana." ..... is not needed.

 

[88GT]

I understand that...but it seems to be making the situation worse, not better.

I don't believe this is correct.

You must separate the legislative consequences from the private business consequences. Private businesses have always had the right to deny firearms in their establishments. Your legal rights are not reduced one iota, not even if every store in this country denied you entrance if you were carrying a firearm, because every time you carry into a private business, you do so solely with the permission of the property owner, not because of any legal right to do it regardless. On the other hand, I do believe the efforts of OCT has resulted in legislation that will EXPAND THE LEGAL RIGHTS of firearms ownership and carry by making it legal to OC a handgun.

It's easy enough for you to argue that the status quo should be left in place. You aren't limited in your legal rights the way Texans are. And if I really wanted to risk pissing you off, I could say that your position is just as selfish as you claim the OCT position to be. "Please don't rock the boat. I don't want what I have taken away because you couldn't be satisfied with a little bit less."

 

[Destro]

I do believe the efforts of OCT has resulted in legislation that will EXPAND THE LEGAL RIGHTS of firearms ownership and carry by making it legal to OC a handgun.

Open carry activists stole the spotlight in California....look how well that worked out for them.

 

[ThatOneKid]

Their FB page makes me want to claw my eyes out. Gonna go to Kroger later today, might as well OC for the first time in public threre

 

[jagee]

I don't believe this is correct.

You must separate the legislative consequences from the private business consequences. Private businesses have always had the right to deny firearms in their establishments. Your legal rights are not reduced one iota, not even if every store in this country denied you entrance if you were carrying a firearm, because every time you carry into a private business, you do so solely with the permission of the property owner, not because of any legal right to do it regardless. On the other hand, I do believe the efforts of OCT has resulted in legislation that will EXPAND THE LEGAL RIGHTS of firearms ownership and carry by making it legal to OC a handgun.

It's easy enough for you to argue that the status quo should be left in place. You aren't limited in your legal rights the way Texans are. And if I really wanted to risk pissing you off, I could say that your position is just as selfish as you claim the OCT position to be. "Please don't rock the boat. I don't want what I have taken away because you couldn't be satisfied with a little bit less."

A difference of opinion wouldn't **** me off, like some others on this site. I see your point, where I come off as selfish because I'm not directly affected so I have the 'don't rock the boat' mentality. However, I stand by my opinion that going to privately owned stores with a rifle strapped to your back is not the most affective way to get the law changed.

 

[cbhausen]

Their FB page makes me want to claw my eyes out. Gonna go to Kroger later today, might as well OC for the first time in public threre

Walk confidently, don't be self-conscious, and please don't touch it unless you're about to shoot someone! (justifiably, of course)

 

[88GT]

A difference of opinion wouldn't **** me off, like some others on this site. I see your point, where I come off as selfish because I'm not directly affected so I have the 'don't rock the boat' mentality. However, I stand by my opinion that going to privately owned stores with a rifle strapped to your back is not the most affective way to get the law changed.

What is? The most effective way to change the law, that is?

I've said it a thousand times elsewhere on this forum: major social change rarely happens without such public demonstrations of civil "disobedience." If we want the public to become used to and comfortable with the sight of people carrying firearms, it isn't going to happen if we prevent people from carrying those firearms.

 

[seedubs1]

Does anyone else think that the idiots carrying ar15's and ak's in public are the left? Seems like they're doing a pretty good job of forcing companies to choose to ask people to not bring in firearms...

 

[88GT]

Does anyone else think that the idiots carrying ar15's and ak's in public are the left? Seems like they're doing a pretty good job of forcing companies to choose to ask people to not bring in firearms...

No, but with language like that, I might be tempted to think of you that way.

 

[OakRiver]

I just seen this news earlier here - Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America Target Kroger | The Truth About Guns

Kroger's position is at the bottom

For Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, every day is opposite’s day. If you or I were lobbying to Kroger’s supermarket chain to allow legal carry in their stores – which they already do – we’d highlight incidents where Kroger disarmed customers and employees were victims of violent crime. See? we’d say. A no-guns policy leaves innocent Americans relatively defenseless against criminal predation. Over athuffingtonpost.com, Moms jefe Shannon Watts uses these real-world incidents as proof that Kroger shouldn’t allow legal carry in their stores. Huh? you say. Here it is from the horse’s mouth . . .

The moms’ group decided to take action in response to recent demonstrations by open carry activists in Kroger stores in Ohio and Texas, and after conducting research that identified more than a dozen shootings on Kroger property since 2012, said Erika Soto Lamb, a spokeswoman.
“Kroger employees shouldn’t have to determine whether the person holding a gun in the frozen aisle is someone dangerous or someone making a political statement,” Lamb said.
​

Conflate much? I mean, how many of those shootings were the result of open carry or, for that matter, legal concealed carry? Why none! But I would point out that anyone holding a gun in the frozen aisle should just let it go, let it go, let it go. Holding a gun in a grocery store is an excellent indication that something illegal’s going down.
Or maybe about to go down, and the person holding the gun is attempting to stop it. Which would be a good thing, not a bad thing. Here in the real world. Back in Shannon’s world . . .

In a letter sent to Kroger CEO Michael Ellis last week, Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts said those existing laws aren’t sufficient to keep customers safe.
“In most states, gun laws are exceedingly lax, especially when it comes to the open carry of firearms,” Watts wrote. “In many states, virtually anyone can openly carry a loaded gun without going through any licensing, permitting or training.”
Moms Demand Action has logged a dozen shootings that have taken place inside a Kroger or in the parking lot of one since 2012.
In June 2013, a 2-year-old girl was shot in a Kroger parking lot in Stone Mountain, Georgia, after a customer tried to intervene in an attempted mugging.
In February, in another incident in Georgia, a 42-year-old man shot and wounded two Kroger customers at a store in Lawrenceville, east of Atlanta.
​

Again, how does this argue against legal carry? And where, HuffPo, are the other ten incidents? Just for fun [/sarc] I Googled “Kroger parking lot rape” and found this story [via onlineathens.com]:

Lawyers for a woman kidnapped from a Kroger supermarket parking lot and then raped reached a settlement with the grocery company in a lawsuit the woman filed against Kroger following the attack . . .
The victim, a 23-year-old Athens restaurant manager at the time, was kidnapped at knife-point by three men as she walked to her car in the parking lot of the Kroger store on College Station Road late one July night in 1994 . . .
Six other crimes were committed in that same parking lot between Oct. 17, 1988, when a woman was robbed at knife-point, and July 13, 1994, when the rape victim who sued Kroger was abducted, according to Gilbert Dietch of Atlanta, another of the woman’s lawyers.
Five of those previous parking lot crimes were directed at customers, and a Kroger employee was the victim in another, he said. Several involved violence, including a beating with a billy stick and a threat using a tire iron, he told a Clarke County jury as the trial opened Monday.
But only one of the incidents — the beating — was ever reported to Kroger’s ”risk management” division in Atlanta, according to testimony by a Kroger security expert Monday.
​

Should have been a defensive gun use? Yes. If you Google “Kroger armed robbery” do you find dozens of examples? You do. Should Kroger force its customers to disarm to shop in its stores? I’d like to see them try.
The basic idea that the Moms are selling – a non-guns policy would make Kroger customers safer – is so ludicrous that even HuffPo writer Ben Hallman felt obliged to end his puff piece with a disclaimer:

It’s impossible to say whether these incidents would have happened if Kroger were to advertise a no-gun policy. Gun advocates are quick to note that criminals are unlikely to abide by polite requests to leave their guns at home.
​

True dat. And well done Kroger for issuing the following statement:

Contacted on Friday, company spokesman Keith Dailey said the grocery chain had no plans to change existing policy, which is to abide by state and local laws.
“Millions of customers are present in our busy grocery stores every day and we don’t want to put our associates in a position of having to confront a customer who is legally carrying a gun,” Dailey said. “We know that our customers are passionate on both sides of this issue and we trust them to be responsible in our stores.”
​

It seems that we have the usual cherry picked examples and wholesale distortions from MDA, just like their school shooting faux-pas, in that they included attacks in the Kroger parking lot in their 'statistics'

 

[SteveM4A1]

Open carry activists stole the spotlight in California....look how well that worked out for them.

Are you arguing that those who OCed their handgun in California had the opposite effect? I'm sure you are well aware that California has a history of being anti-gun, and will use any opportunity it can to restrict the legal rights of its citizens.

Even if you do believe this is correct, you are essentially stating that the exercise of a right leads to its demise. If you have a right and exercise it, then it is taken away from you because of your demonstration, you never had said right to begin with.

I guess you better stop exercising your opinion, or we might all be doomed.

 

[hooky]

If you refuse to consent to a search without a warrant, your right to refuse to consent to a search without a warrant will be taken away.

 

[SteveM4A1]

If you refuse to consent to a search without a warrant, your right to refuse to consent to a search without a warrant will be taken away.

Funny how it sounds when used with ANY other right, huh?

 

[cbhausen]

I'm trolling MDA hard right now and I'm not banned (yet).

 

[Destro]

Are you arguing that those who OCed their handgun in California had the opposite effect?

I'm not arguing, it's just what happened.

 

[OakRiver]

I'm trolling MDA hard right now and I'm not banned (yet).

I refuse to give them site traffic (mainly because I'm sure they'll count a click on their page as support), but are they as bad as they're made out to be?