Panera Shoots Down the Gun Lobby

There seems to be quite an uproar over the announcement by the corporate office of Panera coffee shops to disavow the gun culture, as it were, across the country. Panera is now among an ever-growing number of businesses who have asked – not demand, mind you; they can't do that – their customers to NOT bring guns into their businesses. So if Congress learned nothing from Sandy Hook and the outcry that followed, maybe corporate America did. Of course, there are still some dumbasses who still don't get it and we have one right here in suburban St. Louis; a real piece of work named Dan Zimmerman who operates a website – to the tune of nice profit, no doubt – called TheTruthAboutGuns.com. Zimmerman felt that Sandy Hook "was pretty much like every other mass shooting — it happened in a gun-free zone. I think it would’ve been different if he’d been in a place where someone else was armed,” he says. “I don’t know how you could argue otherwise."

Fortunately, Neanderthals like Zimmerman make up a very small minority as more and more businesses like Panera are making decisions like this based on what the majority of Americans REALLY think – not what the NRA tries to make it appear that Americans think – about guns. Announcing that, for moral, ethical, religious or some other reason, they don't won't guns on the property of the business. And the gun crowd, not unexpectedly, is pissed.
 

By God, it says right there in the 2nd Amendment – a law! – that they should be able to take their guns anywhere they please. And after all, we are a nation of laws! And the right to carry is THE LAW.

Right. Just like the Affordable Care Act (otherwise, lovingly known as Obamacare) is the law; and nobody can challenge it, by God! Certainly not on the grounds of any moral, ethical or religious grounds.

So I wonder what the gun nuts think of the Hobby Lobby decision now. I can only assume that the bunch who find themselves in a tizzy about the Panera announcement found the decision by the Supreme Court in favor of Hobby Lobby just as reprehensible.

Right?

As always, with the right wing, the hypocrisy is astonishing.

Even more astonishing, perhaps, are the extremes they'll go to in order to continue to portray loyalty to their cult. We're reminded of this as the country sits and waits for the ruling on an incident this past August in which a shooting instructor was accidently shot to death by a 9-year-old student. Sadness abounded, but not one word of regret or surprise from the right that a 9-year-old – a fucking 9-year-old! – was given a shooting lesson.

Mark my words: This mishap will be ruled an accident. And it will be met without a word from anyone in the gun crowd, including the family of the victim.

Thanks to the NRA, America's culture is a gun culture, resulting in what has become a gun war in this country. And as with any war, there is collateral damage that is accepted by those members of the NRA – a crazed cult with no more than 5 million members in a nation of 300+ million, but with as much power as the government; a crazed cult with zero respect to the concept of a civilized society; a crazed cult with members who stand loyally together – even in the wake of death.