On this day 29 years ago, a robust, warm, funny, clever man in the prime of his life, at the pinnacle of his profession, took a bullet intended for the President of the United States.  A man who charmed everyone, who served his country with great honor, saw his career destroyed and now lives in a wheelchair, battling severe pain.

Back then, this happened because we made it too easy in America for dangerous people to get dangerous guns. And we still do.

I first met Jim Brady when I was Mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana and was trying to do things to reduce the gun violence in my city.  One of the things I appreciate about my current job as President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is that it’s given me the chance to spend quality time with Jim, who is as affable and hilarious as he ever was.  He tells remarkable jokes, and gives terrific advice.  He’s truly a great communicator in his own right.  Over the years, whenever the organization needed a good Jim Brady quote, Jim Brady would write it best.  For example, when Peter Coors was running for the U.S. Senate from Colorado and said he wanted to repeal the Brady Law, Jim said Coors “must be dipping into the product” and that “he ought to have his head examined.” We are all frequently reminded of his comment “when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. I have several stands around here.”

But it makes me angry to see him suffer.  And it makes me angry when I think about how hard his wife Sarah’s life, also, has been because of Jim’s shooting.
It is unfair.  And it was completely unnecessary.

Jim Brady has to struggle to cross a room, and Sarah has to process elaborate details to get him across town to see the doctor, all because a dangerous, delusional man with a psychopathic crush on a movie star was able to buy a gun as easily as any of us buy a loaf of bread.  Our weak gun laws, which back then relied totally on the “honor system” to keep felons and the dangerously mentally ill from buying guns, allowed the shooter to arm himself.  All the Secret Service and law enforcement protection for the President wasn’t enough to protect Jim and the other people shot that day.  (And some still argue that shootings only happen in “gun-free zones.”)

So after a multiyear struggle, we passed the Brady Law to slow the insanity.  And almost two million dangerous people have been stopped from buying a gun since 1993. But we didn’t finish the job.

We left glaring loopholes so other dangerous and evil men who decide to make themselves famous or avenge some paranoid grievance by destroying innocent life can go to a gun show, approach a table with a big banner shouting “Private Seller: No Background Checks,” and weapon up.  They can buy guns without a background check from “law-abiding citizens” like Timothy McVeigh, who used his gun show sale profits to blow up the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and kill 168 innocent people. The killers at Columbine were outfitted at a gun show.  More recently, Mexican drug cartels apparently have used gun shows to buy a lot of the arms that allow them to be strategically competitive against a national government.

And what about people with firearms getting close to the President of the United States?  Oh, we’ve really tightened our policies on that.  Now radicals proudly carry assault rifles to visits by President Obama, and the current holder of Jim’s old job says it’s just fine, and they’re not at all worried.

So it’s 29 years for Jim and Sarah with today’s anniversary.  Twenty-nine years of pain, and wheelchairs, and specially equipped minivans, and nursing help, and physical therapy.  This is a sad story: and, given the 80,000 nonfatal gun injuries that occur every year in this country, it’s similar to way too many other families’ stories.  It’s been made bearable and promising for the Bradys only by their mutual love for each other and the amazing generosity both of them have shown to their country.

We are all safer because of these two magnificent people.  But we’re far from being as safe as we could be.

On August 10 of last year, a protester showed up at the site of a New Hampshire presentation by the President of the United States openly carrying a 9mm semiautomatic handgun and carrying a sign inspired by the Thomas Jefferson quote that  “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

That evening, the protester was asked by Chris Matthews on the MSNBC news program Hardball whether his gun had been loaded.

He responded,” Wow.  Who would be silly enough to carry an unloaded firearm?”

Yesterday, at the annual meeting of shareholders of the Starbucks Coffee Company, where “the issue of Starbucks allowing guns in stores came up repeatedly during a question-and-answer session,” the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the company made a glaring mistake in discussing Starbucks’ gun policy with his shareholders.

He said the guns being brought into Starbucks stores are all unloaded.

“I do want to clarify something you said that is not right,” he told one shareholder. “You can’t walk into Starbucks with a loaded gun. So that’s not the issue. The issue is, the law allows you to walk in with a weapon that people can see that is unloaded.”

I was shocked by the mistake, but also saddened by my recollections of how many times a similar phrase – “I thought the gun was unloaded” – is heard after a tragic shooting.

Ask Griffin Dix, a friend of mine, and a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.  His son. Kenzo Dix, died on May 29, 1994, when his 15-year-old friend thought the gun was unloaded.

In Tennessee, three days before Christmas last year, a teen was killed by another “unloaded gun.”

“William Michael Clarence Evans died around 1:30 a.m. when a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol went off in the hand of a 16-year-old friend, Jefferson County Sheriff David Davenport said.

“They were handling or examining it for some reason,” the sheriff said. “Evidently, they thought it was unloaded. The 16-year-old pulled the trigger and the bullet hit the 19-year-old in the forehead and killed him.”

One of my best friends from grade school still has the bullet in his back from the summer after ninth grade, when someone said “let’s scare Scott” and thought the gun was unloaded.

A month after I was elected Mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana, one of our police recruits – whose family I knew – was killed in a training exercise because the training officer mistakenly thought he had unloaded his gun.

I could go on and on.

Mr. Schultz, you were wrong. Someone on your staff may have misled you, or maybe they don’t understand how weak our gun laws are in this country, but only two states, California and Utah, require that “open carried” guns be unloaded.  In 44 states, including your home state of Washington, the guns not only can be loaded, but almost certainly are loaded.  Remember that Presidential protester’s statement: “who would be silly enough to carry an unloaded gun?”

There is a growing segment of radical extremists who want to carry their guns anywhere.  Some of them see themselves as an armed front guard fighting policies that they oppose, and some believe, as NRA head Wayne LaPierre said recently, “the guys with the guns make the rules.”

And these people now have a favorite store brand: Starbucks.

It’s time that the company change its policy.  Before one of those “unloaded guns” causes another tragedy.

There won’t be any guns carried by the shareholders attending today’s annual meeting of the Starbucks Coffee Company (NASDAQ: SBUX). It’s not allowed. Guns aren’t allowed in the company’s corporate headquarters, either. And employees in its more than 8,000 company-owned stores aren’t allowed to bring guns to work.

But the company says it’s okay for customers to bring guns into its stores, in any state – and this includes nearly all of them – “open carry” or “carry of concealed weapons” is allowed by law. This has drawn criticism from my organization, as well as attention this week from the characters of the much-beloved comic strip Doonesbury.

Last week, I sent a letter to the company’s ten largest institutional investors, asking them to ask about Starbucks’ dangerous policy, perhaps during a coffee break during the annual meeting. What I told the investors was simple: incidents have been occurring, with growing frequency, where gun owners, seeking to “make a statement” about their “gun rights”, are openly carrying their weapons into more and more public places. These gatherings of armed individuals have provoked a strong and adverse reaction from members of the public who legitimately feel endangered by the proliferation of guns. In response, at least two national chains – Peet’s Coffee & Tea and California Pizza Kitchen – announced policies to bar entry by persons who are armed.

We launched a petition inviting Americans to ask Starbucks to bar guns from its stores. Starbucks, however, has decided to allow guns. While the company has stated “Starbucks will comply with local laws and statutes in all the communities we serve,” this evades the real issue. The law does not require Starbucks to allow guns in its stores. A “no guns” policy would comply with applicable law. The issue is not the law; the issue is Starbucks’ policy.

According to the company’s Standards of Business Conduct, posted on its website, “Partners [employees] may not have or possess any weapon while in a Starbucks store, plant or on other Starbucks property.” No law requires Starbucks to implement such an employee policy; it does so presumably because it recognizes the dangers posed by guns on its business premises. Why is it any less dangerous to allow customers – about whom Starbucks knows far less — to bring guns into its stores?

Dangerous guns shouldn’t be brought into public places like restaurants unless they’re brought in by trained law enforcement professionals. Starbucks has an intelligent ‘no guns’ policy for its annual meetings, its corporate headquarters and its employees. It should have the same policy for its customers.

It’s getting tougher for suspected terrorists to get on a plane, but their Second Amendment “gun rights” continue to trump our concerns for public safety.

The government is now making the so-called “No-Fly List” more comprehensive, adding an additional three thousand names to the list in response to the attempted Christmas airplane bombing.

It’s great they’re working hard to keep terrorists off planes. But these same people that the government has determined to be too dangerous to get on airplanes are not barred from buying firearms in the United States. Called the “Terror Gap”, the lists of those prohibited from purchasing guns from federally licensed dealers do not include known or suspected terrorists- an obvious loophole in federal law.

This is even more ludicrous when you realize that the only lethal terror attacks on United States soil last year were shootings. As the New York Times summed it up so well this January: “Exactly 14 of the approximately 14,000 murders in the United States last year resulted from allegedly jihadist attacks: 13 people shot at Fort Hood in Texas in November and one at a military recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark., in June.”

The government knew both shooters had some connections to foreign terrorists, yet both easily bought guns in the country with the intent to kill Americans. Let’s try to stop shootings like these before they happen: close the Terror Gap, stop terrorists and suspected terrorists from legally buying guns, and help make this country a safer place.

The bills in Congress dealing with this issue are all pretty reasonable. S.1317, sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg, and H.R.2159, sponsored by Representative Peter King, both give the U.S. Attorney General the ability to block specific individuals on the Terrorist Watchlist from securing firearms from a federally licensed gun dealer, while H.R.2401, sponsored by Representative Carolyn McCarthy, prevents anyone on the No-Fly List from purchasing guns from a federally licensed gun dealer.

There’s more we should do to keep dangerous guns out of the hands of dangerous people, but this one should be a no-brainer. I urge readers to call their Senators and Congressmen, and ask them to co-sponsor those bills.

As thousands of concerned citizens continue to sign the Brady Campaign’s petition calling on Starbucks to change its policy allowing customers with guns into its stores (as of this writing, up to 33,000 and counting), there have been two particularly revealing responses to the controversy: one from Starbucks and the other from leading “gun rights” supporters.

Starbucks became embroiled in the gun controversy when it responded to gatherings of “gun rights” activists in its stores, carrying highly visible guns strapped to their hips, by refusing to adopt a “no guns” policy, as had California Pizza Kitchen and other similarly targeted retail chains. Starbucks recently issued a statement defending its policy by citing concern for the safety of its employees. To prohibit the open carry of guns in its stores, says Starbucks, “we would be forced to require our partners [employees] to ask law abiding customers to leave our stores, putting our partners in an unfair and potentially unsafe position.”

Of course, that raises this question: Why would it be “potentially unsafe” to ask “law abiding customers” to leave because they are violating company policy? Starbucks seems to be saying that, if its employees asked the gun-toters to leave, some of these “law abiding customers” would respond by creating a threat to employee safety. Is this not an admission by Starbucks that it currently is allowing armed and potentially dangerous people into its stores? Plus, it is surely self-contradictory to label the gun-toters “law abiding customers” while, in the same sentence, suggesting that, if asked to leave, some of these same customers would resist the request, thereby violating trespass laws? These “law abiding customers” don’t sound very law abiding to me.

Ironically, Starbucks’ management seems to share the safety concerns of its many customers who feel threatened by the well-armed people who now have a home in the company’s coffee houses. But the company has concluded that it must tolerate armed and potentially dangerous people in its stores because it would be more dangerous to ask them to leave. Does Starbucks really believe there is no way it can maintain a “no guns” policy without endangering its baristas?

I suggest that it take a page from its competitor, Peet’s Coffee & Tea. When Peet’s also was confronted with the prospect of meetings of the “open carry” crowd in its stores, it immediately announced a “no guns” policy, said it would post signs to that effect in its stores, and added that “in the event a customer enters the store displaying a firearm and is not a uniformed law enforcement officer, we have instructed our store management teams to immediately call their local police department for assistance.” Peet’s figured out a way to protect the comfort and safety of its customers without endangering its employees; that is, by relying on law enforcement. Why can’t Starbucks do the same?

The other revealing reaction – from leaders of the “gun rights” movement – is to suggest that the “open carry” people may be hurting the gun rights cause. For example, Bob Barr, my erstwhile debate opponent when he was in Congress, recently suggested that “firearms advocates might be better advised not to press the issue publicly by pointedly visiting Starbucks establishments with firearms openly displayed. Sometimes quiet advocacy speaks louder than waving a red flag in someone’s face.” Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (generally considered more extreme than the NRA) told the New York Times, “I’m all for open-carry laws. But I don’t think flaunting it is very productive for our cause. It just scares people.”

Both Barr and Gottlieb are strong proponents of the “more guns, less crime” ideology – the idea that the more guns there are in homes, and in public places, the safer those places will be because criminals will be deterred from attacking when armed, law abiding citizens are present to resist. It is, therefore, surprising for them to take a dim view of the open carrying of guns. According to their “more guns, less crime” logic, locations where open carry occurs should be the safest of all, because criminals will have no doubt that their attacks likely will be met by armed resistance. At the very least, the Barr/Gottlieb comments concede that other Starbucks customers do not share their confidence in the public safety benefits of open carry. Instead, as Gottlieb says, open carry “just scares people.”

Implicitly, Barr and Gottlieb are advising gun owners who want to carry guns in public to keep them concealed from view; that is, make sure the danger is hidden. Perhaps this exposes their real concern about the open carry movement – that it eventually will cause a surge in public concern about the far more prevalent concealed carrying of guns made possible by the gun lobby-supported “shall-issue” laws passed in most states during the last two decades making it far easier to obtain licenses to carry concealed weapons. They also likely fear that open carry may intensify public opposition to recent efforts to gradually expand the locations in which concealed carry may occur –such as parks, bars, college campuses, even airports. After all, it’s not the “openness” of open carry that scares people – it’s the presence of the guns themselves and the inherent danger they entail. The only reason there is not an equivalent reaction to concealed carry is that the danger is, by definition, hidden from view.

The evidence is overwhelming that the “shall-issue” concealed carry laws have been a disaster for public safety. They have allowed dangerous people to obtain concealed carry licenses, those people have committed grievous crimes, and the scholarly research shows that the laws generally have been “associated with uniform increases in crime.” But the danger becomes evident to the public only episodically – when someone with a concealed carry license shoots someone accidentally or commits a violent act, such as the six multiple shootings committed by concealed carry licensees in 2009 alone. What if concealed carry licensees had to reveal they were packing whenever they entered Starbucks or other public places? The debate over guns in public would be far different.

“Gun rights” advocates like Barr and Gottlieb have good reason to fear that their “guns anywhere” agenda would be threatened if the open carry movement starts causing the public to understand the true danger of guns in public – the open danger, and the concealed danger as well.