Off Target

Initially I was on the side of the open carriers.  Embarrassingly so.

I was taken to task and I've come to Jeebus about it.

OCT done fucked up.

Now Target has caved and asked us, nicely, to not bring our guns to their stores.

I looked at the phrasing carefully.  They don't ask us to refrain from open carry, they ask us to leave our guns elsewhere.

While OCT might have been who got this snowball rolling, they're not why Target feels safe enough to put out such a proclamation.

Let's recall that I've come to see that OCT was doing it wrong.  What could we have done differently that would have changed the outcome?

I don't think the outcome was ever in question.  Like I said before, there are almost no large corporations that actually like gun owners.  They definitely fear the boycotts.  So they pay lip service to us in the hopes we don't really look too hard at their corporate policies and donations.  But when something comes along to give them cover to do what they've been pining to do for as long as their dark corporate hearts can remember, they do.

The only difference here is they thought our condemnation of OCT meant we'd agree.  Like me, at the start of this, they confused the goal with the tactic.  Most places were condemning the tactic, not the goal.  There are a few outliers who oppose the goal, of course.

Now we're going to boycott Target.  I hope they get the message.

By the way, the only place I still see OCT discussed is on the gun blogs.  Maybe if we hushed for a bit it'll blow over?