Starbucks: You Can Bring Your Guns, But Please Don't

CEO 'respectfully requests' customers stop promoting stores as pro-gun
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 18, 2013 9:31 AM CDT
Starbucks: You Can Bring Your Guns, But Please Don't
In this March 3, 2010 file photo, Greg Dement, left, is handed a Starbucks coffee drink as he sits with a handgun strapped to his belt while looking on at an anti-gun rally in Seattle.   (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, file)

With another mass shooting about to inevitably shove gun control back into the national conversation, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is begging you: Please, leave Starbucks out of it. "I am writing today with a respectful request that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores," Schultz writes in an open letter published in several newspapers, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Starbucks, he complains, has "been thrust unwillingly into the middle of this debate."

But Schultz stops short of actually banning guns, in part because he doesn't want to ask employees to "confront armed customers." He tells CNN that Starbucks is "not pro- or anti-gun," but believes that guns "should not be part of the Starbucks experience." The move isn't a direct response to the Navy Yard shooting, he tells Reuters, adding that he's "not worried we're going to lose customers over this." (More Starbucks stories.)

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