Moms’ Petition Follows Trader Joe’s Decision to Prohibit Open Carry of Guns in its Texas Stores; Campaign Follows Successful Corporate Public Safety Efforts at Target, Chipotle, Sonic, Chili’s, Jack in the Box, Starbucks, Safeway and Albertsons, Facebook, Instagram
NEW YORK – Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, part of Everytown for Gun Safety, today launched a national campaign today thanking Trader Joe’s for prohibiting the open carry of firearms in its Texas stores and asking the grocery chain to extend that gun sense policy to its stores nationwide.
The Moms Demand Action campaign, which includes a petition to Trader Joes (available here), follows similar actions aimed at Target, Chipotle, Sonic, Chili’s and Jack in the Box that led these companies to take swift action to stand with Moms and enforce or adopt policies that prohibit open carry to protect the safety of their employees and customers. Moms also played a pivotal role in getting Safeway and Albertsons, the country’s second largest grocery chain, to clarify their company-wide policy prohibiting firearms in their stores.
“Making healthy choices for my family no longer means just buying fruits and vegetables — it also means making sure my kids are safe when we go to buy them,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “I am grateful that Trader Joe’s stood up for gun safety in Texas by prohibiting openly carried firearms in their stores –that’s just common sense. But in many parts of our country, customers can still shop for pot-stickers and Joe-Joes cookies at Trader Joe’s side by side with someone openly carrying a loaded firearm. We are asking Trader Joe’s to take its Texas gun sense policy nationwide by prohibiting the open carry of firearms at all its stores.”
Trader Joe’s is one of more than 400 businesses that has stood up for customer and employee safety by prohibiting open carry on their premises in Texas in the three weeks since that state implemented its new open carry law requiring businesses to allow handguns to be openly carried in their stores or comply with burdensome signage requirements. The Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action has been working with businesses across the state on this issue—a continuation of the group’s work to persuade businesses to adopt gun sense policies.
In states where no background checks or training are required to buy guns and carry them openly in public, businesses have a duty to protect their employees and patrons. Laws in a majority of states allow people to openly carry loaded firearms in public with absolutely no training, permitting, or minimum age requirement. Combined with estimates that millions of gun sales every year occur without a background check in the U.S., this means that people in most states can legally carry loaded rifles in public without ever having passed a criminal background check.
Moms Demand Action has a history of working with national businesses to prioritize gun safety in their stores. Past campaigns have garnered hundreds of thousands of supporters to successfully persuade corporate giants like Starbucks, Target, Chipotle, Sonic, Chili’s, and Jack in the Box to publicly announce gun sense policies for their national storefronts. More information on Moms Demand Action’s corporate campaigns is available here.