Targeting Target Stores

A hat tip to David Codrea at the War on Guns for pointing me to this article at the Inquisitr.com website entitled Target's Gun Ban has Unexpected Results as Assailants Attack Store's Unarmed Customers.  I take no joy from this, and feel no sense of schadenfreude.

 I guess the first thing to note is that Target didn't really issue a ban. Instead, it issued a request that folks leave their guns at home when shopping at Target stores. Is that a ban? In one sense it might as well be, if concealed carriers choose to honor the request. For myself, if a friend of mine asked me not to carry in his home, because I valued that person's friendship, I would certainly honor that request, though I would also have to question whether that friend valued my friendship as much as I valued his. But I don't have "friendships" with giant corporations.

If you are watching only the MSM news, and you are of a criminal mindset, you didn't get that nuanced message that Target issued. Instead, what you heard was that Target stores are now a target rich environment of unarmed victims with money to spend and merchandise free for the taking. Everything that is happening at stores in the Atlanta area was fully predictable.  I think the word "Unexpected" in the title of this piece is therefore a little naive.

That the Demanding Moms would hail the statement made by Target as a victory for their cause was absolutely predictable.  That the mostly anti gun media would trumpet it as a victory for "common sense" gun control was equally predictable.  Target's message was essentially that Target stores want to sell stuff, and stay out of the fray over guns.  Instead, what they got was customers being robbed at gun point by armed predators.

The lesson in this, for those who may be looking for lessons, is that nobody can give in to, or attempt to appease anyone who is shrieking at them.  And the Demanding Moms are definitely a small, AstroTurf, group of shrieking harridans, funded by Micheal Bloomberg.  They do not represent any one's actual customers, but instead represent Michael Bloomberg.  The ploy of shrieking at the current target is to get him to do what they want, and not to think about it.  If he thought about it, he would probably have come to the conclusion that the status quo ante was the best policy. But by raising a ruckus, they hope to stampede him into doing something that is  not necessarily in his best interest.  Contrary to what you may have heard or read, the State legislatures in every State that passed "Shall Issue" laws debated the topic ad nauseum and passed them because these laws are the most fair, and protective to everyone involved. And having a policy that defers to State law is probably best for most businesses.
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