What a pleasant surprise

Via far too many online sources to credit we learn that Starbucks, a corporation long known for their knee-jerk leftist tendencies, has stepped up to the plate and summarily refused a demand request from the Brady Campaign that the coffee empire ban the lawful open carry of handguns by law-abiding customers from their stores in California:

"The national Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence made the request in the wake of a series of meetings in local restaurants over the past few months by Bay Area Open Carry, a group that hopes to make it legal to carry loaded guns in California... [BAOC member Brad] Huffman said Open Carry advocates often visit Starbucks displaying [the article's author appears to choose the wrong descriptive here, perhaps intentionally; the participants all have their firearms safely and properly secured in holsters, which doesn't seem to quite merit the term "displaying", which in our opinion implies that the group's members are somehow waving their sidearms around willy-nilly] unloaded weapons, either during formal events or informally"

(The group's cause in a nutshell:  Californians currently suffer under a "may-issue" policy for concealed handgun permits, which for non-celebrities, the non-rich and the non-politically connected usually results in a "may-not" answer to their permit application.  Under that state's laws, however, the open carry of an unloaded firearm with the ammunition readily available elsewhere on one's person is perfectly legal, as long as it isn't in a prohibited building like a courthouse or within 1000 feet of a school.  Consequently, Bay Area Open Carry and other such groups carry openly as much as possible in order to gently persuade the state legislature to pass a "shall-issue" concealed-carry permitting system, a strategy that has been previously used with great success in states such as Ohio.)

"I don't want someone who carries a gun into a store to be making life-and-death decisions. I don't think it's safe for them to be there," said [local Brady Campaign ninny] Griffin Dix, who leads the Oakland-Alameda County chapter, which has more than 500 members and other chapters in San Mateo and Contra Costa counties."

We would very much prefer to have a trained law-abiding citizen present to make such a "life-and-death" decision when armed criminals (who are extremely common in Oakland, the last time we checked) decide to break countless laws (to say nothing of a given store's policy) and enter an establishment with the intent to rob and assault the innocent employees and patrons inside, rather than being stuck with the alternative of having all those victims be otherwise completely unable to defend themselves from those thugs.  We're sorry that you can't see the obvious good sense in that line of thinking for yourself, Mr. Dix.

Excellent job of turning down the hysterics, Starbucks management.  Please keep up the good work.