Target Gets Drawn Into Gun Rights Battle
Executives at Target probably never thought much about their red-and-white bull’s-eye logo becoming so fraught, but the mammoth discount retailer now faces the challenge of being the latest corporation pulled into the fight over open-carry gun rights. On Wednesday, the social-media-savvy Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America began sharing images of men carrying semi-automatic rifles inside Target stores, including in Texas, where the group Open Carry Texas held a recent demonstration to point up the right under state law to display such guns in public.
Over the last few months Moms Demand Action has pressured more than a half-dozen corporate food and beverage chains into rejecting the open carrying of firearms at their locations, including Starbucks, Chipotle, and Jack in the Box, and most recently Sonic and Chili’s. Large retailers have become the latest front in the battle, including Home Depot last weekend, and now Target.
In March, Open Carry Texas posted images to Facebook of its armed members inside a Dallas-Fort Worth area store, noting that “Target is very 2A friendly.”