Moms Demand Strikes Out... Again

The hectoring scolds of Moms Demand Action know what’s best for you, and they don’t intend to stop bullying you until they get their way… or Michael Bloomberg stops cutting them checks.
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It’s so cute to watch them attempt to be relevant:

Oregon members of the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America are asking Fred Meyer to stop allowing customers to openly carry guns in its stores.

Twelve moms delivered copies of the Moms Demand Action petition bearing more than 18,000 signatures to Fred Meyer headquarters in Southeast Portland on Tuesday morning, said Taylor Maxwell, who is handling publicity for the group. The company received signatures only from the states where Fred Meyer operates, Maxwell said.

Anneliese Davis of Portland, a volunteer with the Oregon chapter of Moms Demand Action, said the group has three main goals: to raise public awareness about what she called “lax gun laws,” to change gun policies at businesses where families shop, and to help business owners realize that they can ban guns from their premises.

“If I owned a business, I would want to protect my employees by making it clear that you can’t openly carry” guns in the store, Davis said.

Davis added that she supports the Second Amendment right to bear arms. “I come from a gun-owning, hunting family … my husband is a veteran,” she said. “I can’t find a single (family member) who feels the need to take a rifle with them when they go to the grocery store.”

Melinda Merrill, a spokeswoman for Fred Meyer who received the petition and signatures, said Tuesday, “Our policy is that we follow local laws. So if it’s allowed in the municipality where our store is, then we follow the local law.”

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Of course, Davis can’t bring herself to be honest and admit that they aren’t just attempting to ban the (incredibly rare) carry of rifles into stores. Their primary target is to ban the more common (but still not very common) open carry of holstered handguns. The goal of Moms Demand is to try to make gun owners outcasts and pariahs, by reducing the number of places that allow people to carry firearms.

Having failed to garner the support for their unpopular views through legislation, they’ve decided to attempt to bully private businesses instead through social media campaigns, and by sending their “volunteers”—never more than a dozen, and sometimes as few as three—for photo ops that they coordinate with sympathetic local media.

I wonder how much longer they’ll continue their campaign, which clearly isn’t working.

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