Gun control campaign piles pressure on Target and other companies

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/04/gun-control-campaign-bloomberg-companies-open-carry

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Campaigners for stronger gun laws in America are planning to build on a recent series of victories prohibiting the open display of firearms in public places and are looking to take their gun safety message nationwide in November’s midterm elections.

In the latest push, the grassroots group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America on Wednesday launched a petition calling on the Target retail chain to prohibit individuals openly carrying rifles in its stores. The move follows a stunt in Texas where radical gun enthusiasts walked around a Target outlet in the Dallas-Forth Worth area displaying semi-automatic rifles on their shoulders.

Pictures of the action were posted on the Moms Demand Action website.

The pressure is now on Target to join a growing list of major chains – including Jack in the Box, Chipotle, Sonic and Chili’s – that have agreed to block the open carrying of firearms in their outlets even when that conflicts with local state laws. The campaign began tentatively last September when Starbucks was persuaded to ask its customers to forego bringing their guns into its stores.

In recent weeks the campaign, deploying deft use of social media, has gained rapid momentum.

“When people see that they can have an impact on social media, and that the message that we don’t want open carry in our stores is getting across, that is very empowering. Big companies haven’t wanted to get involved in this issue, but now we’re forcing them to,” said founder of Moms Demand Action’s founder, Shannon Watts.

The spate of victories has already caused signs of jitters within the main pro-gun lobby in the US, the National Rifle Association. In a display of highly unusual public uncertainty, it criticized the Texas open carry activists, calling them “weird”, though hours later the NRA’s executive director Chris Cox made a U-turn and said the criticism had been a mistake.

Moms Demand Action recently joined forces with the extensive network of gun control advocates amassed by the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. The new combined campaign, called Everytown, has been given a boost in the form of a pledge of $50m from Bloomberg’s private wealth.

Watts said the umbrella organization had three main objectives in its medium-term strategy. One is to influence big companies to adopt safe gun policies – such as the current campaign on Target.

The second is to put pressure on state legislatures to change local gun laws. Everytown strategists have been studying the voting record of individual state assemblies to discern which ones are closest to effecting reforms – thus identifying where resources could be focused with maximum impact.

At state level, too, there appear to be signs that the NRA might be shifting its position. Watts pointed out that six state legislatures had passed new laws making it harder for domestic violence offenders to obtain guns. The NRA, which has for many years opposed such reforms, has recently swung behind the measures.

The third, and most important objective for the movement, Watts told the Guardian, was to nudge Congress in a gun safety direction. In the wake of the Newtown tragedy in December 2012, President Barack Obama tried to cajole Congress to introduce universal FBI background checks on all gun purchasers, but he was frustrated when the Senate rejected the idea by just six votes.

“We are going to aim to get at least one million Americans to vote in the midterms according to their desire to see sensible gun laws in this country,” Watts said. “Michael Bloomberg’s $50m will help us do that.”

Watts said the gun control movement was taking a leaf out of the NRA’s own playbook. It was in the process of giving each main Congressional candidate in the midterms a rating for how favourable they are towards safe gun laws – in echo of the NRA’s pro-gun ratings.

She said Moms Demand Action would seek to capitalise on female voters committed to safer regulations. “Research shows that when women go to the polls, they vote above all on healthcare, jobs and education. We are going to add gun violence to that list,” she said.