This past Wednesday, columnist Mark Morford helped explain — in the satirical voice of a business owner — why “open carry” advocates advancing the gun lobby’s agenda by parading their guns into the local coffee shop is a really stupid idea.

An instant classic, his article is appropriately titled, “Hi! Come in! Please, no murdering“:

…Clearly, you are not a police officer. Therefore, the management, our employees and pretty much everyone within a 100-mile radius would very much appreciate it if you would put away that ego-fluffing man-toy that is designed solely to kill other living creatures and induce fear and ignorance as it regresses every hesitant advancement in the human soul back to caveman grunting lunkishness. Thank you again!

Oh, please do not misunderstand! We are all terribly impressed. It is so very patriotic of you to show off your little popper! Are you in a gang? Are you a drug dealer? Are you going to shoot some scary terrorists, Mr. pallid paranoid Constitution-misquoting videogame-addicted guy? Protect all of us here in the casual neighborhood coffee shop from those crazy liberals and their health care reform and organic pretzels? Thank you so much! But really, I think we’ll be OK without your little display. Enjoy your frappucino, won’t you?

What, no drink? You now wish to order nothing at all and instead plop yourself down in the corner, plug in your laptop and angrily scour Facebook all day for evidence that your ex-girlfriend, the one who left you two years ago at a full, what-the-hell-was-I-thinking sprint, is now dating a liberal or a pacifist or an atheist and is far, far happier than she ever was with you? We understand. We appreciate your desire to partake of our free Wi-Fi, buy nothing and not give a damn that we can’t really stay in business that way.

Why, look at you! Refusing to step away from the counter and instead choosing to read aloud from your little card that says how it’s completely legal to carry an unconcealed, unloaded firearm in a public space! Way to stand up for your rights! God bless America!

Turns out you are right. It is legal, sort of. Then again, so is eating gravel, wearing a giant hat made of cow manure and squirrel tails, and slapping yourself in the face repeatedly while ranting semicoherently about Jesus, masturbation and Shania Twain. And you don’t see anyone doing that, do you? Except Carl over there?…

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UPDATE:

Looks like Mr. Morford hit a nerve with Sebastian over at SnowFlakesInHell.  Sebastian calls him — wait for it — “a piece of intolerant garbage” because “Morford… doesn’t like people shoving their Second Amendment rights in his face.”

Point of clarification:  What Morford and thousands of other Americans don’t like is people shoving guns into their and their children’s faces.  The Second Amendment says exactly zero about the “right” to carry semi-automatic pistols and assault weapons into coffee shops and restaurants.

Furthermore, any fair reading of his piece shows Morford was not characterizing “gun owners” as a group.  He was making a statement about a subset of non-law enforcement gun owners who want to “normalize” the idiotic behavior of carrying weapons into places where pistols and rifles don’t belong — like coffee houses and restaurants.

Finally, Sebastian plays the sexual orientation card in trying to make his point, a tactic perhaps not unexpected among other gun advocates but — based on his past posts — is beneath his standard level of argument.

If anything, it shows how close to the truth Morford’s biting take on this “open carry” phenomenon really is.

In fact, Sebastian himself would seem to agree — on the politics of such behavior at least, if not the principle.

UPDATE 2:

Last post on this thread.  Sebastian clarifies his point here.

The key reply is that clothing which some find offensive is different from firearms that others — justifiably — find frightening.  That is: pants aren’t guns, and being gay doesn’t kill people.  Not sure if CDC counts how many Americans die by strange-looking pants each year, but if they do, chances are the number will be a lot less than 30,000 (the number shot to death every year in this country).

Being concerned about lethal weaponry in the hands of people with no law enforcement training inside a coffee shop patronized by families with kids is simply not in the same universe as outlandish behavior at a “gay pride fair”. They aren’t even remotely comparable.

The only way these two arguments could be reconciled is if Morford were making an argument about the political ineffectiveness of open carry.  He’s clearly not doing that. His argument is about people having to make life-and-death decisions because they walk into the wrong coffee shop in the morning, one populated by armed gun activists more concerned about themselves than about the people around them.  It is the fact that Morford did it so effectively that is irksome to certain gun advocates.

This isn’t about “intolerance” of some sort of “victimized” open carry gun advocate minority.  It’s about the rest of the community not wanting to get shot because they went to Starbucks — a company that has yet to say, “Unless you are a police officer, no guns allowed in our stores.”

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If you have an extra minute today, please sign our petition asking Starbucks to keep its stores — and the families and children who visit them — free from guns:

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