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by Paul Helmke and Dennis Henigan

What would your reaction be if you and your kids walked into the local Starbucks and, while contemplating the choice between a latte and a mocha cappuccino, you noticed several fellow customers had semi-automatic pistols and ammunition magazines hanging from their hips?

This scenario has become more than a flight of imagination.  In several communities in California, and elsewhere, it has become reality.

Welcome to the “open carry” movement, an effort by “gun rights” extremists to foist their interpretation of the Second Amendment on the rest of us by openly carrying handguns in public places.  While virtually all states have at least some minimal restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons, few states do anything to regulate the “open carry” of firearms.

Particularly in the Bay Area in Northern California, “open carry” adherents have been gathering in Starbucks and other coffee shops and restaurants – their semi-automatic pistols and revolvers in plain view – apparently to make an ideological statement.

The sight of such gun-toters in Starbucks reminds us of the incidents last summer, when anti-Obama protestors appeared at political events and “town hall meetings” with handguns and assault rifles openly strapped to their bodies – including events attended by President Obama himself.

The “open carry” folks view this as “normalizing” their self-defined “right” to carry guns with them at all times wherever they please, regardless of its impact on public safety.  But what about the rights of everyone else who wishes to be free from lethal weapons in public places, except for trained law enforcement?

Surveys show that the presence of more guns in a community does not make people safer, or feel safer; indeed, it has the opposite effect.  Studies show that the more guns there are, the more gun violence there is in that location.  In addition, 80 percent of those who don’t own guns say they would feel less safe if more people in their community acquired guns; only eight percent would feel safer.  Even among gun owners, roughly equal proportions would feel less safe if more people had guns versus those who would feel more safe.

Take the reaction of one coffee shop customer in San Ramon, California when faced with a group of pistol packers:  “I’m scared.  I’m getting out of here.  They say they want to make a statement.  What’s wrong with a T-shirt?”

The “open carry” gatherings provoked an immediate reaction from Californians who were appalled that coffee shops and restaurants would allow guns on their premises.  At least two national chains have responded responsibly.

For example, Peet’s Tea & Coffee stated that its policy “is not to allow customers carrying firearms in our stores” unless they are uniformed law enforcement officers. It also indicated that it would post a notification of that policy in all its stores and would call the local police for assistance should a customer display a firearm in the future.

After being alerted by local chapters of the Brady Campaign about a scheduled “open carry” meeting at one its Northern California stores, California Pizza Kitchen issued a statement that it “does not allow guests other than uniformed officers to display firearms in our restaurants” because of its concern “that the open display of firearms would be particularly disturbing to children and their parents.”

But now we come to Starbucks. When asked about the company’s policy on the “open carry” of firearms in its stores, its Customer Relations Department responded to the Brady Campaign’s California chapters that “Starbucks does not have a corporate policy regarding customers and weapons; we defer to federal, state and local laws and regulations regarding this issue.”

Here’s the problem with that answer: generally speaking – and certainly in California – businesses have the right to bar guns on their premises.  It is their property and, just as they can prohibit entry by people with bare feet, they can do the same for people with guns.

Despite its response, Starbucks clearly does have a policy and it is one that should be deeply disturbing to the vast majority of its customers. 

Starbucks has apparently chosen to allow civilians to carry semi-automatic pistols and possibly even assault weapons into its stores.

Such a policy is disturbing to law enforcement officials as well as Starbucks patrons.  As a San Mateo County Sheriff’s Lieutenant put it, “Open carry advocates create a potentially very dangerous situation,” because when police respond to a “man with a gun” call, they have no idea what the intentions of the gun carrier are and “the result could be deadly.”

If a mistake in judgment or perception results in a shooting at a Starbucks, will the company still have no “corporate policy regarding customers and weapons”?

This is no idle consideration.  Just this past September, at a picnic hosted by “open carry” activists at a Michigan state park, a gun activist was charged with reckless use of a firearm after he unintentionally fired his semi-automatic handgun in a parking lot.  Then there was the California “open carry” activist in December who was arrested for carrying his .357 magnum revolver near a school, complaining, “I just can’t see what I did wrong.”

Even more disturbing was the man – “of high interest to the FBI because of his alignment with violent demonstrators at abortion clinics” – who was arrested for possession of a semi-automatic handgun which he was carrying openly outside a North Carolina abortion clinic last October.

As these and other incidents show, the “open carry” movement clearly has implications beyond Starbucks. It is part of a broader campaign, led by the National Rifle Association, to force guns into every corner of American society by “normalizing” the carrying of guns in public places, openly and concealed.

The gun pushers want an America where there is nowhere that you and your family can go to be free from guns.

As just one example, the same lawyer who won the U.S. Supreme Court case two years ago which declared a Second Amendment right to have a gun in your home for self defense, has filed a new lawsuit seeking to force localities to allow civilians to carry guns on the streets.

The “open” carrying of guns is just the visible tip of the “guns everywhere” iceberg.  The gun lobby’s clout in state legislatures has forced consideration of dangerous proposals to allow people to legally carry concealed weapons into bars, churches, workplace parking lots, airports, parks, college campuses and elsewhere.

While most states do not require any permit, license or training of any kind to carry a semi-automatic pistol openly, the NRA assures us that those who have permits to carry concealed weapons are all “law-abiding citizens” whose gun-toting behavior protects the rest of us.  Since May, 2007, however, these “law-abiding citizens” have killed at least 117 people, including nine law enforcement officers.  During that same period, they have committed eleven mass shootings.

So, Starbucks, what will it be?  Like Peets Tea & Coffee, will you do the socially responsible thing and stand up for the rights of families and children to be free from guns when they visit your coffee shops?

Or will you take the chance that there will be more than just shots of espresso being served up in your stores?

If you think Starbucks is wrong here, sign our petition today:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/starbucks_guns/?rc=brady

Almost 9 million YouTube viewers have seen Beyoncé and Lady Gaga – scheduled to perform on the Grammy Awards this Sunday – in their recent music video, “Video Phone.”

The music was fine, but I wonder why they went out of their way to glorify guns in their production.  Beyond the sexual stereotype of guns in general, it’s hard to understand why they are in the video at all.

What’s more, Lady Gaga has been using fake machine guns as props in her live shows as well, pretending to shoot into the crowd.

Finally, rapper Dwayne “Lil Wayne” Carter was also announced yesterday as a Grammy Award show performer, just months after he pleaded guilty to a gun charge.  He is scheduled to be sentenced in February and is expected to serve as much as a year in jail.

I can hear people say, “Hey, it’s just show business,” and that Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne each put on a good show.  I understand that.

Yet it is difficult to deny the influence that these entertainers have on our popular culture and the young people who absorb it.  Guns aren’t toys, even when they’re made with pretty colors or sung about in rap songs, and it is dangerous to treat them that way.

To Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Lil’ Wayne, the Grammy Award show producers, and CBS, I have a video that I’d like you to promote sometime that gives a different perspective on guns.

Colin Goddard was shot four times at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, and lived to tell his story to the world.  In this video, he describes what it was like that morning, and asks us to call on our elected officials to make it harder for dangerous people to get guns.

Colin is no performer, but he knows that the reality of gun violence isn’t pretty or entertaining.

It is a deadly problem that more of us – including celebrities – should take seriously.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Colin Goddard knows something about guns on college campuses.

On April 16, 2007, Colin was a student at Virginia Tech when he was shot four times by a mentally disturbed armed classmate who killed 32 fellow students and faculty.

Colin survived his wounds that day, and has become an eloquent activist for sensible gun laws in this country. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch Colin’s story here:

All over America, ordinary citizens and elected officials have been listening to his story.

One of the issues Colin has spoken most forcefully about is an effort by the gun pushers to force colleges and universities to accept loaded, concealed firearms on their campuses.

In 2009, Colin teamed with other young people, college and university faculty and administrators, and campus police chiefs to fight these proposals in state legislatures across the country.

In one battle after another, the gun lobby was defeated after elected officials heard the arguments of new groups like Students for Gun Free Schools and young leaders in the gun violence prevention movement such as Colin, his friend Lily Habtu of Virginia – a fellow survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting who still carries bullet fragments in her jaw; John Woods of Texas, who lost his girlfriend at Virginia Tech; Brian Roach of Missouri, and hundreds of other young activists who were instrumental in defeating these ridiculous and dangerous proposals.

Although gun lobby-backed legislation was introduced in 12 states in 2009, not a single “guns on campus” bill was enacted into law, including failed proposals in Texas, Alabama, Missouri and Louisiana.

In fact, since the shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, the gun lobby has suffered 34 consecutive defeats in trying to pass such legislation.  In addition, Colorado State University reversed its previous policy and now prohibits guns on its campuses.

Andy Pelosi, director of the organization Gun Free Kids, had it right when he explained, “There comes a point where the gun lobby’s agenda just becomes too extreme for state lawmakers to support.  Most lawmakers simply don’t want to have to explain the fact that they risked the safety of college students just to appease the radical ideology of the gun lobby.”

Colin Goddard has been a big part of this fight, as he personally campaigned in Missouri, wrote letters to Louisiana state legislators, and published op-eds in major Texas newspapers.  For example, in an opinion column for the Dallas Morning News explaining why Texas should reject a “guns on campus” bill under consideration there last spring, Colin recalled that when the shooting started on April 16, 2007:

[M]y whole class thought it was construction noise. Then I thought the killer was a police officer. I barely had time to make the [911] phone call. Anyone who thinks I could have gotten to a weapon and shot somebody I never fully saw watches too many movies.  Instead of putting more guns in that classroom two years ago, I would work toward removing the two that were there, in the hands of the shooter. Guns on campus were the problem two years ago, not the solution. And we have to solve the problem, not make more of them.

Legislators in Texas, Missouri and Louisiana listened to this courageous young man.  It’s time for more sensible politicians to put these “guns on campus” bills away for good.

Instead, elected officials should focus on another effort that Goddard and other young leaders have been advocating for: closing the loophole that allows dangerous people to buy assault weapons, semi-automatic pistols and other firearms at most gun shows from “private sellers” without first passing a Brady criminal background check.

You can see undercover footage that Colin filmed at gun shows across America documenting such dangerous gun sales practices in this remarkable video:

I’m grateful that 2009 was the second straight year when common sense policies on college campuses were upheld without exception.

We need to take more sensible steps to reduce gun violence in 2010.  That would make for a happier new year for us all.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

New developments in the Christmas Eve gunplay between Gilbert Arenas and Washington Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton seem to come out every hour.

Suffice to say, if Arenas violated the law by bringing guns into the District of Columbia to keep them at the Verizon Center, he should go directly from the basketball court to a court of law.

If he is found guilty, Arenas — and any others who have violated the law in this incident — should be required to serve punishment up to and including appropriate jail time.

If media reports are accurate, on top of violations of the law and NBA policy, Arenas also likely violated at least two of the four fundamental rules of responsible gun ownership, the first of which is to remember that “all guns are always loaded.”

Even a casual reading of the news across the nation shows that assuming a gun is unloaded is a recipe for disaster.

• A Texas father thought his weapon was unloaded before he accidentally shot his 2-year old daughter with it.

• A Florida radio personality accidentally shot his wife and his dog with a weapon he believed was unloaded.

• An Ohio teenager accidentally shot and killed a friend with a firearm he believed was unloaded.

The principle here is that guns are not toys.  Guns are designed for killing people — and are used to do so over 30,000 times every year in America.  They should never be treated as a joke.

As captured in a now-iconic photograph, the fact that Arenas and his teammates would laugh while Arenas pretended to gun them all down shows that this message hasn’t even begun to sink in.

Washington Post columnist Dan Steinberg put it best, saying of this spectacle:

What a monumental, colossal, skull-crushingly bad idea that was.

An NBA player who is reckless with firearms is far from the role model that the parents of thousands of his young fans expect him to be.

To that end, NBA Commissioner David Stern was right to suspend Arenas for his behavior, but much more needs to be done.

It is time for America’s athletic community to use its clout and prestige to push for positive reforms in our nation’s gun laws as well as the way American culture addresses — or too often, fails to address — its horrific gun violence problem.

Perhaps as part of his restitution, Gilbert Arenas — like Michael Vick and other athletes before him — could become part of that reformative process.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

If the National Rifle Association’s leaders want to help suspected terrorists get easy access to guns, bucking the wishes of their own membership, they should come out and say so.

Instead – even in the wake of the Fort Hood shooting massacre – NRA bosses cloak their opposition to legislation that would close the Terror Gap in our nation’s gun laws with misdirected readings of the Constitution, as if our founding fathers said anything about the “rights” of suspected terrorists to arm themselves before slaughtering innocent Americans.

To the contrary, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote 60 years ago, the Constitution is not a “suicide pact”:

No liberty is made more secure by holding that its abuses are inseparable from its enjoyment… The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact….

Justice Jackson wrote this in a First Amendment case. Yet while many may disagree over how to apply his principle to questions of free speech, the issue should be clear when it comes to access to firearms.

Speech is used to express ideas. Firearms are used to kill over 30,000 Americans every year and wound another 80,000.

What the NRA’s leaders ignore is that America has always been about striking a balance between order and liberty, rather than always favoring one over the other. By sacrificing public safety at the altar of an “any gun, anywhere, any time” dogma, NRA bosses attempt to wreck this balance.

There is no room for this sort of mindset in America, especially after 9/11, and most recently, the Fort Hood shooting.

Making it easy for suspected terrorists to buy the weapons they would use to attack us on our own soil – just to adhere to some fundamentalist reading of the Second Amendment that even the founders, as well as the current Supreme Court, would not recognize – is dangerous and suicidal.

According to a recent survey by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, most NRA members agree. Luntz found recently that 82% of NRA members favor prohibiting people on the “Terrorist Watch List” from buying guns. The NRA’s bosses, however, are either unaware of their members’ views on this issue or they don’t care.

When it comes to protecting our communities from terrorism, Americans do not read the Constitution as a theoretical exercise. We live it and breathe it every day. So while the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun in the home for self defense, we also know that it isn’t a “suicide pact” that requires us to allow suspected terrorists to easily acquire all the weapons they desire.

Most Americans – including NRA members and gun owners – reject the NRA leadership’s false choice between order and liberty.

We choose both.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)