Starbucks is getting heat right now over people openly carrying firearms into their stores where it is legal to open carry firearms anywhere unless prohibited by legal means. Gun blogs, such as Alphecca, are posting the story and providing discussion about the issue.

The Brady Campaign is using a scare tactic to try an limit the carrying into Starbuck locations. If Starbuck caves into the Brady Campaign, I’ll never buy at Starbucks again…

Here is my issue…

Statements such as the following by Paul Helmke lack any critical thinking…

The decision by Starbucks to welcome guns in its restaurants where the law permits represents a public health risk. While food-borne illnesses are estimated to kill 5,000 Americans each year, more than 30,000 of us are killed annually by firearms. Guns represent a public health threat at least as great as food poisoning. Firearm fatalities are consistently ranked as one of the leading causes of death among young people in America. As Dr. David Hemenway of the Harvard School of Public Health wrote in 2004, “Across U.S. regions and states, where there are more guns, children are at a significantly greater risk of dying.”

Showing large numbers of deaths without a reason
Of the 30k that are killed, lets see what constitutes that 30,000 deaths…

Newbius has a page that discusses the CDC statistics on deaths. Go read it and be educated… That is government data there, and the data is not provided by the “gun nuts”–whoever they may be.

It is all a lack of Critical Thinking
The reasoning seems to be that firearms could cause death, so we should deny entry of such ‘dangerous’ items into Starbucks…

Should we not allow anyone to enter Starbucks since we all carry E. coli? Should we deny entry to those 1,000,000 or so individuals who carry the virus that causes AIDS? Should we deny entry to … You get the idea… SCARE TACTIC!

Don’t get me started about denying drive-thru service since automobile accidents cause about 35,000 deaths per year in the USA…

Don’t be fooled. You are just as likely to be shot by someone in Starbucks as you are contracting AIDS because Starbucks serves those with the virus that causes AIDS. You are much more likely to die in a car accident than end up with the two examples from the last sentence–perhaps you should stop driving to be safe?

Think critically. Fight for everyone’s rights rather tan jump on a bandwagon that has no thought to their reasoning–especially when there is NO logic for the reasons they give…