YESTERDAY Howard Schultz, who heads Starbucks, released an open letter containing a "respectful request that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas." His letter was polite, thoughtful, even-handed and thorough. In the past, Mr Schultz explained, Starbucks simply "followed local laws", permitting openly-carried weapons in states that allowed it and banning it in states that did not. This prompted gun enthusiasts to stage "Starbucks Appreciation Days", during which they descended on Starbucks while armed. In his letter Mr Schultz said bluntly "we do not want these events in our stores". The gun debate, he writes, has grown "increasingly uncivil, and, in some cases, even threatening... The presence of a weapon in our stores is unsettling and upsetting for many of our customers." Hence this respectful request. Not a ban. Not a declaration that guns or gun-owners are bad or wrong. Not a statement in favour of gun control or laws limiting what weapons people can buy or sell or have or carry. Just a simple request: please don't bring guns to our stores.
Cue the predictable outrage from commenters on Mr Schultz's letter and articlesreporting his request: Mr Schultz is "anti-American" and "pro-socialist"; he is trampling on the constitution; he's going to lose business, etc. As one commenter on the Blaze writes, "It is my God Endowed Unalienable Individual Right, secured by Our Constitution, to take any firearm I please anywhere I please. Shall not be infringed, means exactly what it says." I might ask him what he thinks "well-regulated militia" means, and whether he believes laws keeping guns off airplanes are similarly unconstitutional.
The second amendment, as courts have repeatedly made clear, permits private gun ownership and forbids states or cities from banning guns outright. But much ground exists between outright bans and taking "any firearm I please anywhere I please". Not all rights are absolute. The first amendment, for instance, protects free speech. Yet we still have laws against libel, slander and inciting a riot. I cannot stand outside my house at 3.00am and scream my opinions at the top of my voice and claim a first-amendment defence when the police show up to enforce an anti-noise ordinance. The first amendment also protects freedom of religion, but business owners cannot use belief in the Curse of Ham to deny service to black people. For the same reason, by the way, religious liberty cannot justify denying service to legally-married couples.
"Compromise", wrote Richard Bosson, the New Mexico Supreme Court justice whose ruling I linked to in the previous sentence, "is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation... That sense of respect we owe others, whether or not they believe as we do...is the price of citizenship." Mr Schultz is simply asking gun owners to show that same sense of respect to their fellow citizens who might not like drinking their coffee while wondering whether the fellow sitting dourly by himself with an AR-15 slung over his shoulders is an Adam Lanza or just a second-amendment absolutist. That shouldn't be too hard. Right?
