martharosenberg
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Once again, the myth that gun carriers protect themselves and others has exploded. Two recent shootings at Starbucks, which welcomes guns in its stores, show why responsible corporations ban lethal weapons on their property. In both shooting cases, women were given guns by their fathers to "protect" them, only to drop their purses and shoot, or almost shoot, other customers.
At a Cheyenne, Wyoming Starbucks in 2011, a juvenile girl dropped her purse, discharging her gun. "The bullet missed John Basile, 43, by about 12 inches," reported the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. The unidentified girl had never taken a hunter safety class or any kind of formal firearms training and had been encouraged by her mother to point the gun at a "bad person" if she were in trouble. Right.
This week, it happened again. Another woman given a gun by her father dropped her purse and discharged her weapon at a Starbucks, this time in St. Petersburg, Florida. The woman said she'd forgotten the gun was in her purse and had never taken it out to clean or service it, reported the Tampa Bay Times. A customer was shot in the leg.
The women's inability to defend themselves should surprise no one. Despite the bluster of gun rights activists, carriers do not make themselves or others safe. If carrying made someone safe, no one from President Reagan to Chris Kyle to Sean Collier, the officer allegedly killed by the Boston bombing suspects, would be shot. Nor are carriers trained like the Secret Service, Kyle or law enforcement personnel.
Despite fallen officers and carriers whose weapons were used against them, the myth that carriers protect themselves and others continues. When a 20/20 special revealed that trained gun carriers could not stop an assailant they knew would attack, there was a cascade of "yes buts" from gun rights activists, rejecting the terms of shootout. Maybe the assailant should have approached from two blocks away and yelled "draw."
Starbucks has ignored pleas from customers and gun safety advocates to ban lethal weapons in its stores which is the right of property owners. And, in the height of hypocrisy, it issued a statement following the Florida shooting which said, "At Tyrone Square Mall, our primary concern is always for the safety of our customers and store employees, and we are thankful that the injuries sustained are reported to be non-life threatening." What?
Would a business whose "primary concern is always for the safety of our customers and store employees" allow lethal weapons on its premises?
Meanwhile, gun rights groups, led by radio host Craig Bushon, are hailing Starbucks as "a leading advocate for sane gun laws across America," this week. They are charging that Starbucks "is under attack by the NGVA (sic) because they aggressively support the NRA’s Pro-Gun Stance." National Gun Victims Actions Council, NGAC, called for a boycott of Starbucks because of the likelihood of such shootings. END
Learn more about the Starbucks boycott
Withdraw your support from gun-friendly companies.
A study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found detectable levels of arsenic in chicken from grocery stores in 10 American cities, including in organic chickens. If the drug were fed to all chickens, over 100 US deaths would result from arsenic-related lung and bladder cancers, report the authors.
The National Chicken Council, which represents the firms that produce 95 percent of US meat chickens, dismissed the study as reflecting "very low levels of arsenic," reported the New York Times.
This is not the first time arsenic levels in poultry have made the news. In 2011 Pfizer announced it would stop selling arsenic-treated chicken feed after the FDA found inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen, "at higher levels in the livers of chickens treated than in untreated chickens." Other poultry feed products with arsenic remained on the market, however. The FDA has approved arsenic in poultry feed for years to control parasites in birds, promote weight gain and feed efficiency and improve "pigmentation." Like artificial dye in farmed salmon and gasses used to keep grocery store beef red, the FDA apparently puts public health risks below helping industry move its products.
In 2006 in the same journal, Environmental Health Perspectives Dr. Ellen Silbergeld raised questions about arsenic levels in poultry including "additional exposures to arsenic from confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) wastes via land disposal, which may reach human populations though soil." Such runoff from megafarms is now indicted for high levels of arsenic found in US rice. A Consumer Reports investigation last year found concerning arsenic levels in the food supply and recommended federal action.
At the time of the article, Dr. Silbergeld was assailed by Big Ag for raising the alarm about arsenic levels in poultry as having a "political agenda" but reports since 2011 suggest she was right.
The levels of arsenic reported this week in Environmental Health Perspectives are below federal limits and were also obtained before Pfizer withdrew its widely used feed product in 2011. But the researchers point out that the danger levels of arsenic for humans were established in the 1940's. Nor is the National Chicken Council a reassuring voice.
An article in the now discontinued Gourmet magazine says the National Chicken Council admits that 10 percent of chickens by the time they are hung from shackles at the slaughterhouse have had a wing dislocated, fractured, or broken from rough handling. It also admits that 2 percent of the birds are awake as the blade cuts their throat or boiled alive because they miss the stunner that is supposed to spare them. Richard L. Lobb, a spokesman for the Council said of the estimated 180 million a year who perish this way, "This process is over in a matter of minutes if not in seconds," in Gourmet.
Both arsenic in birds and bird feed and the deaths described in Gourmet magazine stem from the cult of cheap food perpetrated by US factory farms. It is a cult food consumers are increasingly rejecting.
END
A study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found detectable levels of arsenic in chicken from grocery stores in 10 American cities, including in organic chickens. If the drug were fed to all chickens, over 100 US deaths would result from arsenic-related lung and bladder cancers, report the authors.
The National Chicken Council, which represents the firms that produce 95 percent of US meat chickens, dismissed the study as reflecting "very low levels of arsenic," reported the New York Times.
This is not the first time arsenic levels in poultry have made the news. In 2011 Pfizer announced it would stop selling arsenic-treated chicken feed after the FDA found inorganic arsenic, a carcinogen, "at higher levels in the livers of chickens treated than in untreated chickens." Other poultry feed products with arsenic remained on the market, however. The FDA has approved arsenic in poultry feed for years to control parasites in birds, promote weight gain and feed efficiency and improve "pigmentation." Like artificial dye in farmed salmon and gasses used to keep grocery store beef red, the FDA apparently puts public health risks below helping industry move its products.
In 2006 in the same journal, Environmental Health Perspectives Dr. Ellen Silbergeld raised questions about arsenic levels in poultry including "additional exposures to arsenic from confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) wastes via land disposal, which may reach human populations though soil." Such runoff from megafarms is now indicted for high levels of arsenic found in US rice. A Consumer Reports investigation last year found concerning arsenic levels in the food supply and recommended federal action.
At the time of the article, Dr. Silbergeld was assailed by Big Ag for raising the alarm about arsenic levels in poultry as having a "political agenda" but reports since 2011 suggest she was right.
The levels of arsenic reported this week in Environmental Health Perspectives are below federal limits and were also obtained before Pfizer withdrew its widely used feed product in 2011. But the researchers point out that the danger levels of arsenic for humans were established in the 1940's. Nor is the National Chicken Council a reassuring voice.
An article in the now discontinued Gourmet magazine says the National Chicken Council admits that 10 percent of chickens by the time they are hung from shackles at the slaughterhouse have had a wing dislocated, fractured, or broken from rough handling. It also admits that 2 percent of the birds are awake as the blade cuts their throat or boiled alive because they miss the stunner that is supposed to spare them. Richard L. Lobb, a spokesman for the Council said of the estimated 180 million a year who perish this way, "This process is over in a matter of minutes if not in seconds," in Gourmet.
Both arsenic in birds and bird feed and the deaths described in Gourmet magazine stem from the cult of cheap food perpetrated by US factory farms. It is a cult food consumers are increasingly rejecting.
END
Interview with Addiction Expert Omar Manejwala, MD
Author of
Craving: Why We Can't Seem to Get Enough
Dr. Manejwala, a psychiatrist, is the senior vice president and chief medical officer of Catasys in Los Angeles and is the former medical director at Hazelden Foundation. Dr. Manejwala is a leading expert in addiction medicine and public speaker who addresses the topic of addiction and compulsive behaviors.
Rosenberg: Your book draws close parallels between cravings of an alcoholic or drug addict which can be life-threatening and cravings for food or exercise or sex in so-called normal people. You say both originate from similar parts of the brain and both can destroy lives.
Manejwala: Process addictions, addictions to behaviors, can wreak as much havoc as drugs and alcohols in people's lives as the examples in my book illustrate. A person can be so addicted to food and counting the calories and working them off at the gym, he or she is unavailable to family, friends and his or herself. I asked one patient how she would react to a clinical study that required her to temporarily stop exercising and she said she would drop out. Another way in which the addictions or cravings are similar is they aren't overcome by treating so-called "symptoms" but in outgrowing the symptoms and learning a new way of life.
Rosenberg: Is this similar to the recovery concept that addictions can not be overcome by the sheer force or willpower or a headlong assault?
Manejwala: Yes. There's a reason that most, if not all, diet books stress a new way of living and eating. Because the danger starts when you get to your correct weight and return to your old ways.
Rosenberg: Your book does a phenomenal job of identifying what is called in recovery circles "relapse thinking"; someone is no longer drinking or using drugs--or is at their correct weight--and they think they have somehow gotten or regained control and are "cured."
Manejwala: In Craving, I describe many of these biases that lead someone right back down the same path to their compulsive behavior or addiction. They include Hindsight Bias, in which someone says, "I never really had a problem to begin with," and cognitive biases in which people think they have a new "understanding" which will stop their cravings or they are "different" from others suffering from the same cravings.
Rosenberg: You describe in your book a doctor who continually went into rehab for alcoholism and as soon as he felt a little better, left against the advice of rehab professionals who felt he should remain a lot longer. Each time he thought he had things "under control"--and each time he relapsed.
Manejwala: The feeling of not being in control of our own thinking and desires is so unpleasant, we create false beliefs that we have control over them. Humans are wired to have such a strong desire to feel safe and secure, our brains will "short circuit" to give us the false belief that we are in control. This protects the self or ego--not the person's self-esteem or identity but the person's ability to be an actor and enact purposeful behavior in life.
Rosenberg: You provide some very useful suggestions to overcome cravings that are also a little bit counterintuitive.
Manejwala: The things that work for cravings are not the things you would think would work for cravings. First of all, the focus can't be on the 5 percent of someone's life when he or she is ruled by the cravings. The focus cannot be on "treating" the symptoms as our instant fix culture seems to emphasize. Instead, it has to be on the 95 percent of a person's life where he or she is not craving. Recovery from cravings is mostly about what you start doing, and much less about what you stop doing.
Rosenberg: People who are alcoholics or drug addicts can go to Twelve Step meetings and "work a program" as it is said. But how do other people fighting cravings change their lives?
Manejwala: I devote many pages to this in Craving and most of the same principles apply. First of all, a person needs to be responsible to someone else and to develop a wider, fuller life built on integrity and helping others. He or she also needs to develop human bonds based on identification, trust and compassion.
Rosenberg: As alcoholics and addicts do in their self-groups?
Manejwala: Yes. Sharing enables people to lower their boundaries. It humanizes love. Cravings flourish in secrecy and many people suffering from cravings do not have intimate bonds. The acceptance and love from others who truly know a person can cure that person of the shame that drives so many cravings. Love is the only thing that cures shame. END
"Unintentional poisoning killed 838 children in the US in 2010; more than 90 percent of them were teenagers, ages 10-19," says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Child Injuries page. "130,000 children visited emergency departments for unintentional poisoning-related injuries in 2011… About 80 percent of these calls were for children under 6, and roughly half of them involved exposures to medications."
But search for similar statistics about gun deaths of children on the CDC website and you will find a big back hole, thanks to NRA lobbying. The NRA has succeeded in getting legislation passed that blocks government health agencies from studying gun violence lest it lead to tighter laws. In fact, you will find more entries for "nail gun" safety on construction sites on the CDC site than for the 5,000 plus children killed by guns every year in the US, which is almost six times that of poisoning deaths. Thank you, NRA.
Gun lobbyists and the legislators whose strings they pull enacted this legislation the same way they have prevented a registry of gun owners or retention of background check information by authorities for more than 24 hours. They tack it on to appropriation bills which receive little debate or discussion because they are viewed as "must pass," mandatory legislation. The riders prohibit the CDC and also the National Institutes of Health from spending funds to "advocate or promote gun control," says the Center for American Progress in a
Why? Because gun violence is a law enforcement issue and government research agencies should not be participating in policy debates, bluster NRA lobbyists. Don't confuse us with facts! The NRA doesn't mind gun violence being a law enforcement issue because it personally pushed through most of the EZ gun laws we are living with like the prohibition of registries, record retention and prohibition of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from requiring dealers to conduct annual inventories.
Thanks to "no inventory laws," a single dealer had 997 guns that were unaccounted for and 93 that were not logged in, during an inspection last year reports, the Center for American Progress. 1,300 illegal Chicago guns were traced to one dealer, Chuck’s Gun Shop since 2008. And Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply in Tacoma, Washington lost 238 guns in three years–one of which surfaced as a gun used during the 2002 Maryland/Washington D.C./ Virginia sniper murder spree that left 10 dead. What's a little unaccounted for inventory?
The NRA-driven riders against studying gun violence and deaths are not overt bans, but are perceived as a warning to government agencies that their funding will be cut if they tread into gun violence terrain. Since the prohibition against spending funds to "advocate or promote gun control," funding for the CDC to study firearms injury prevention has fallen from over $2 million to around $100,000, says the Center for American Progress report--that's 95 percent.
"Most of these poisoning-related deaths and injuries are predictable and preventable," says the CDC website, announcing its 2012 National Action Plan for Child Injury Prevention (NAP), an initiative developed "with more than 60 stakeholders to spark action across the nation." No such action plan exists for the six times as many children killed by gun violence. "Predictable and preventable" gun violence like the 2-year-old Kentucky girl who was killed by her 5-year-old brother with a rifle he had been given as a gift, this week. And the 4-year-old who shot and killed his 6-year-old his playmate in New Jersey, last month.
END
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Chicago
The radio ads almost sounded like a joke. "Ecsape" to Texas Gov. Rick Perry exhorted Illinois businesses (exchanging the position of the "s" and the "c" in "escape") in preparation for his recruitment trip to Illinois, even as Texas reeled under one of the biggest industrial accidents in its history. Fourteen died and up to 200 were injured by a fire and explosion at West Chemical and Fertilizer Company in West, TX last week.
"Your situation is not unlike a burning building on the verge of collapse," said print ads in Crain's Chicago business in eerie foreshadowing of the actual burning and collapsing of West Fertilizer and surrounding buildings. A buy of $42,000 radio ads and $38,000 print ads challenged businesses to leave the state of Illinois which "is designed for you to fail" and relocate in Texas where taxes are low and government won't interfere with your business.
Authorities have not yet released the cause of the explosion at West Chemical and Fertilizer Company in West, TX which annihilated entire swaths of the small town and leveled homes. But the plant is a stellar example of Perry's promise that your business won’t be hassled by government regulation if you move to Texas.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration records show that the last time West Chemical and Fertilizer Company was inspected was 28 years ago. The inspection, in 1985, revealed "serious" violations says the New York Times including improper storage and handling of anhydrous ammonia. For the safety violations, West Chemical and Fertilizer Company was fined…$30. Ouch
The plant did not comply with current state regulations because it is so--built in 1962--that it was grandfathered in, says the Times. Last year, West Chemical and Fertilizer Company was fined by the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for more anhydrous ammonia violations.
In 2006, neighbors complained to authorities about strong ammonia smells but the plant was subsequently granted two air permits, reports the Times.
West Chemical and Fertilizer Company was not rated by the E.P.A. as a major risk because it had no prior accidents. OSHA excluded it from its National Emphasis Plan which covers businesses using hexavalent chromium, combustible dust, lead, hazardous machinery and more, because it did not produce explosives, reports the Times.
Gov. Perry's move-to-Texas ads are not the first time he has put his boot in his mouth. During a live presidential debate last summer, he forgot the name of a government department he nonetheless wanted to abolish. (It was the Department of Energy.)
A speech he gave in New Hampshire during the campaign was so uneven and bizarre, many accused him of being drunk. "The Republican presidential candidate seemed to titter at his own jokes, gesticulate wildly, make odd facial expressions and go off on strange tangents," reported the New York Daily News.
In the introduction to her 2012 book, As Texas Goes…How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda, Gail Collins says her fascination with Texas began when she heard Gov. Perry deliver an Alamo-like speech at a 2009 Tea Party rally. "We didn't like oppression then; we don't like oppression now," he roared. The problem was, says Collins, "this was a rally about the stimulus package."
Perry's laissez faire attitude toward Texas businesses is not limited to manufacturers. The governor voted against legislation that would have kept farm workers out of the fields while they were being sprayed with pesticides, writes Collins. The reason he rejected the legislation was because the owners said they could be relied upon to work out their own plans for protecting the workers from chemical sprays without government regulation. Let's move our businesses to Texas. END
Like Martha Rosenberg's book, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency, on its new facebook page
The death of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, assistant prosecutor Mark Hasse, Colorado Department of Corrections executive director Tom Clements and Mingo County Virginia sheriff Eugene Crum stem from the NRA's two favorite myths: that the thing that stops "bad guys" with guns is "good guys with guns" and that criminals go out of their way to chose gun free zones.
Mike McLelland, , carried a gun even when he walked his dog and his wife Cynthia also had a license to carry a concealed handgun. "There were guns hidden all over the house,: his son, J. R. McLelland, told the New York Times. “Behind doors, everywhere. He could have been standing next to a .40-caliber Glock and you would not have known it. When they said that he got shot, it was unbelievable because he was so well-armed and so well-versed in guns.” Still the couple was murdered in their home over Easter weekend.
Ten days before the McLellands' murder, Tom Clements, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, was similarly shot in cold blood at his home. And five days after the McLellands' murders, Walter Eugene Crum, Sheriff of Mingo County, West Virginia, was shot and killed while eating lunch in his patrol car just a few blocks from the Mingo County Courthouse.
The NRA has been strangely silent on the murders, temporarily stopping it catechism about "good guys" stopping "bad guys" and that criminals seek gun free zones for their crimes. Did the fallen officials need more guns? Should they have had their weapons drawn at all time? Even when opening the door to someone they may have known? The NRA doesn't say.
The murder of four law enforcement officials and one's wife since January confirms what criminologists have known for a long time--being armed is no hedge against the element of surprise. Contrary to the High Noon, "Draw Your Weapon" scenario that the carrier movement drums up, most gun crimes approximate what befell these officials and many others every year with armed but unprepared people dying. Nor do armed civilians probably have the weapons training the officials have.
Another NRA myth the recent bloodshed against officials explodes is the "law abiding citizen." Kim Lene Williams, wife of the former North Texas judge Eric Williams confessed this week that she and the judge were involved in the shootings of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, assistant prosecutor Mark Hasse.
Gun laws and background checks only violate the rights of "law abiding" citizens says the NRA in defeating gun bill after gun bill-- and only criminals will have guns! Does it mean "criminals" like Kim Lene and Eric Williams?
The fact is that every disgruntled employee, jealous husband and jealous wife, angry drunk and twentysomething shooter in a theater or mall was previously "law abiding." The myth of law abiding "good guys" and criminal "bad guys"--and that the first can defend against the second--perpetuates gun sales and kills sane gun laws. It kills 9,500 Americans a year including law officials. END
Use your economic power to force gun laws that the majority of the US wants and law makers won't enact
Make the Tell and Compel pledge
If red meat had a publicity agent, he or she would be fired by now. Publicity agents are supposed to plant positive news about their client and kill any negative publicity. But ever since James Garner, the face of the “Real Food for Real People” beef campaign, suffered a heart attack in 1988, there has been nothing but bad publicity about red meat.
Consider this succession of damaging events.
Mad cow disease surfaces in the US in 2003, with three cows diagnosed with the fatal disease by 2005 and the sources never found.
Chairman and CEO of McDonald’s Corporation, Jim Cantalupo, suffers a fatal heart attack at a company event in 2004.
Charlie Bell, Cantalupo’s replacement as McDonald’s CEO, is diagnosed with colon cancer two weeks after taking office and also dies.
Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, books unfriendly to the meat industry, stay on the New York Times bestseller list for years.
Video of abused “downer” cows sparks the largest meat recall in US history, tarring the National School Lunch Program in 2008. Big Meat reacts to undercover leaks by trying to criminalize farm videos.
Both Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton flirt with meat-free diets; Clinton’s seems to have stuck.
Martha Stewart, the doyenne of taste and nutrition, broadcast a vegetarian Thanksgiving show in 2009. What?
More than half of Americans cut back on meat consumption after 2008 recession. The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture cannot unload the unwanted product and tries to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) meat allowances to get rid of “the oversupply.”
A world outbreak of swine flu in 2009is linked to pig farms, according to some news sources. Big Meat beseeches press to call the disease the H1N1 flu instead of Swine Flu.
More than 24 workers in pork slaughterhouses in charge of pulverizing pork brains for overseas markets develop a debilitating, possibly permanent nerve condition called progressive inflammatory neuropathy. Health departments are forced to assure public they won't catch PIN from eating pork.
Nutritionists caution Americans are get too much protein not too little, to chagrin of Big Meat which uses alleged "protein deficiencies" in marketing
Medical, cancer and heart groups warn people to cut back or eliminate red meat.
Government warns about dangers of bacteria from undercooked meat on cutting boards and utensils and heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from overcooked meat.
How was your decade?
Nor has the bad news for red meat stopped. This week scientists at the Cleveland Clinic announced a new explanation of why it may contribute to heart disease. The real culprit, the scientists suspect is “a little-studied chemical that is burped out by bacteria in the intestines after people eat red meat. It is quickly converted by the liver into yet another little-studied chemical called TMAO that gets into the blood and increases the risk of heart disease,” reports the New York Times.
Is red meat soon going to be like cigarettes? A habit so stigmatized that people try to hide it and employers and insurance companies overtly discriminate it? Doctors, public health officials and animal lovers may laud the trend--but the publicist for red meat is surely going to be fired. END
Learn about Martha Rosenberg's new book, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/authormartharosenberg
There is something shameless about the NRA "advising" school systems how to protect themselves from its own lethal policies. It brings to mind the Mafia's protection rackets in which businesses are coerced into buying "protection" against violence or property damage which the seller of the protection will otherwise commit. We'll protect you from….us.
The NRA-funded National School Shield Task Force report, released last week, turned out to be riddled with errors. It recounts a school incident that never happened, presents pundit opinions as facts and omits discussion of the actual weapons the killers at Blacksburg, DeKalb, Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, Red Lake and Newtown used that allowed such bloodshed, according to Mother Jones magazine.
In other Mafia like actions, the NRA is reported to have planted a high level spy in groups working for sane gun laws. Double agent Mary Lou McFate ingratiated herself to ant-gun violence groups, pretending to be sympathetic and then betraying them to the NRA, according to ABC News. Mary Lou McFate, who also goes by the name Mtoary Lou Sapone, is a career mole, also accusing of spying on humane groups for a surgical company using live dogs in its training demonstrations (nice) and trying to infiltrate Greenpeace.
Like the Mafia, the NRA's power derives from a few provocateurs willing to bully and intimidate honest citizens (and lawmakers) to keep its coercive power. Who can forget the NRA's robo-calls last month to the Sandy Hook community exhorting bereaved citizens to "to oppose any legislation that tramples your Second Amendment right, and inhibits your inherent right to self defense." What?
"If the NRA has an ounce of sensitivity or caring or humanity, they will apologize to Newtown and the families that received this call," said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, whose office got complaints about the automated calls from angry constituents, including victims' families, CBS News reported.
The NRA has been accused of tormented the bereaved before. In the Chicago suburb of Glenview in January at a public meeting about gun safety, its minions "laughed and joked about the terminology used by Linda Jenkins as she described the cold-blooded murder of her pregnant sister," reported Marjorie Fujara, a participant and also a doctor who treats gun violence victims. Anti-gun control activists turned the event into a "raucous afternoon of... heckling and jeering at panelists," photographing the crowd and speakers with phones and cameras and yelling," reported the Chicago Sun-Times. They booed and screamed "liar" and "loser" at speakers from anti-gun violence groups, reported the Glenview Patch. Just the kind of people to counsel school systems about violence. END
Use your buying power against the NRA Make the Tell and Compel Pledgehttp://gunvictimsaction.org/blog/2013/03/pledge-tell-and-compel/v
Despite its reputation for global consciousness and socially aware customers, Starbucks is actually a huge ally of the NRA by welcoming lethal weapons in its stores. By refusing to ban guns from its premises as it is allowed to as a property owner, Starbucks facilitates gun proliferation and the gun lobby's stated goal of universal armament of citizens at all times in all venues.
While forward-thinking corporations like California Pizza Kitchen, Peet’s, IKEA and Disney banned guns from their premises when presented with a petition from the Brady Campaign with 33,000 signatures over a year ago, Starbucks refused. Among the guns Starbucks openly welcomes into its coffee shops are the FN Herstal 57 (which enabled the Fort Hood shooter to fire 100 bullets in 10 minutes, killing 13 and wounding 30), the Glock 19 used by Jared Loughner against Rep. Gabby Giffords and the AR-15 of Aurora and Newtown fame. Thank you, Starbucks.
In response to a 2012 campaign called the Brew Not Bullets Boycott, Starbucks said, "We believe that supporting local laws is the right way for us to ensure a safe environment for both our partners [employees] and customers." But "local laws" clearly allow businesses to prohibit firearms on their property and other companies are clearly doing it. Worse, Starbucks admits the risk to its employees and customers by banning guns at its Starbucks' corporate headquarters. Why should only senior management be protected? Gunshot accidents have already been reported in Starbucks stores.
Starbucks' stance has earned it unexpected support from gun lovers, though they are not its traditional customers. Starbucks is "a Seattle-based, trendy, slightly artsy-crafty chain to begin with, but they have correctly assessed that they're now in middle America and they don't want to offend the sensibilities of middle America in order to pacify a few left-leaning gun-control supporters," said Paul Valone, director of Grass Roots North Carolina about the boycott, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
But most see the opposite situation--a few, fear-based extremists obsessed with amassing more and bigger weapons and creating a society in which everyone is armed. "If you're someone who is feeling the need to tote around a gun everywhere, ask yourself, 'What it is you're so afraid of,' not, 'Which other pointless location can I suddenly feel the need to be armed?'" wrote Christian Science Monitor reader Lynn Gleason.
According to Elliot Fineman, CEO of the National Gun Victims Action Council (NGAC), we are at the "secondhand smoke" moment in the gun debate--the moment when people realized that smokers endangered everyone not just themselves and they were no longer tolerated. When corporations and consumers stood up to Big Tobacco and banned smoking in stores, restaurants and public spaces, laws soon followed.
Like second-hand smoke, the public is now beginning to see that gun proliferation is a constant threat to children and innocent bystanders that is getting worse through the aggression of gun rights' activists and lawmakers' inaction. An estimated 100 million people want sane guns laws and only one million do not, says Fineman. That means that consumers have the numbers to move both corporations and lawmakers and force sane laws simply by voting with their wallets.
Martha Rosenberg will speak about her recent food and drug expose, Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health (Prometheus 2012), at the Mid-Manhattan Public Library on June 18.
