Kroger stands up to MDA

[longslide10]

Yay Kroger!



Fresh off of victories at Target, Sonic, Chipotle, and other stores, Moms Demand Action is taking its fight to the nation’s largest grocery store chain.

The gun control group has its sight set on Kroger to get the food store to prohibit guns, or “kindly suggest” shoppers don’t bring their guns into the store.

Recent demonstrations by open carry activists proudly carrying their weapon in Ohio and Texas stores prompted the group to level aim at Kroger, The Huffington Post reports.

Moms Demand Action has pointed to 12 shootings in or around a Kroger since 2012, one in which a 2-year-old was shot “after a customer tried to intervene in an attempted mugging” in a store parking lot, HuffPo reports.

For now, Kroger spokesman Keith Dailey says the store does not intend to change its policy – for the sake of their employees, and out of respect for their shoppers.

via The Huffington Post:

“Millions of customers are present in our busy grocery stores every day and we don’t want to put our associates in a position of having to confront a customer who is legally carrying a gun,” Daily said.



“We know that our customers are passionate on both sides of this issue and we trust them to be responsible in our stores.”

Open carry activists insist that a sign saying that guns “aren’t welcome” won’t affect the targeted audience – criminals and law-breakers – but only force law-abiding citizens to leave their guns at home. Who would protect us then?


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[gfrlaser]

but only force law-abiding citizens to leave their guns at home. Who would protect us then?

Or more likely, as I would, not shop there at all.....

 

[BC1]

“Millions of customers are present in our busy grocery stores every day and we don’t want to put our associates in a position of having to confront a customer who is legally carrying a gun,” Daily said.

Here's some advice for workers of establishments that don't allow guns... It's not your job to remove armed individuals from the store. Don't get hurt confronting security issues for the employer.

 

[bofh]

The original story, Kroger Under Fire From Gun-Control Moms says:

Moms Demand Action has logged a dozen shootings that have taken place inside a Kroger or in the parking lot of one since 2012.

In June 2013, a 2-year-old girl was shot in a Kroger parking lot in Stone Mountain, Georgia, after a customer tried to intervene in an attempted mugging.

...

It's impossible to say whether these incidents would have happened if Kroger were to advertise a no-gun policy. Gun advocates are quick to note that criminals are unlikely to abide by polite requests to leave their guns at home.

That is nicely twisted reality right there. From Kroger shooting suspect identified by police - Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com:

Wednesday's shooting took place in the parking of the Kroger grocery store at Memorial Drive and N. Hairston in Stone Mountain. Police said a Good Samaritan had confronted a man who had allegedly just robbed a pedestrian.

"A guy came up to another guy and just pulled off his chain and started running," said Shenequa Brammer, an eyewitness at the scene.

Brammer said the man lost sight of the alleged robber, but then saw him again in front of the supermarket. A confrontation ensued and the alleged robber fired as many as 15 shots into the Good Samaritan's car, striking a 2-year-old child in the abdomen, according to police.

The Good Samaritan gets shot at by the alleged robber and hits a 2-year-old child as well. Banning firearms or open carry would have changed what exactly?

 

[S&W645]

I shop at Kroger and legally carry in Ohio. Our county didn't vote for 0bama either but the city mayor was a member of MAIG.

 

[longslide10]

The original story, Kroger Under Fire From Gun-Control Moms says:



That is nicely twisted reality right there. From Kroger shooting suspect identified by police - Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com:



The Good Samaritan gets shot at by the alleged robber and hits a 2-year-old child as well. Banning firearms or open carry would have changed what exactly?

Bloomberg is a con artist and his mindless minions like MDA have been sucked into his scheme. They wouldn't know the truth if it slapped them in the face.

 

[longslide10]

I carry in my local grocery stores and sometimes it is in a OWB holster with just a loose fitting t-shirt covering it so I know it prints but no one has ever said anything and that is the way it should be.

 

[gfrlaser]

Sometimes, I feel like I am the only one that open carries.

Sent from my Trio Stealth_10 using USA Carry mobile app

 

[CharlesMorrison]

Sometimes, I feel like I am the only one that open carries.

Sent from my Trio Stealth_10 using USA Carry mobile app

You are not alone my friend!

Sent from my DL700D using USA Carry mobile app

 

[Ringo]

I shop at Kroger and see lots of people open carrying. Part of the norm here.




Life Is Good. :victory:

 

[ezkl2230]

Folks, be sure to support Kroger and their associated brands. Moms Demand just announced a boycott of their stores in MI today. They're turning up the heat; we need to make sure there's no fuel for that fire.

 

[ezkl2230]

I just faxed the following letter of support to Kroger:

W. Rodney McMullen
Chief Executive Officer
Kroger Co.
1014 Vine Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-1100


Dear Mr. McMullen:


We in the pro-Second Amendment community understand that Kroger has attracted some very unwanted attention and found itself in a most unenviable position with regard to the debate over Second Amendment rights.


Michael Bloomberg-backed Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDAGSA) has essentially demanded that you declare your premises to be “gun free” (let us be perfectly clear: acquiescence to their demand for an open carry ban WILL eventually lead to a further demand that you declare yourselves to be COMPLETELY “gun free”), and threatened to boycott your Michigan locations.

Now, Senators Chris Murphy, Richard Blumenthal, and Dianne Feinstein are abusing their elected positions in the US Senate to force Kroger to implement an open carry ban, with the same eventual goal as MDAGSA. The unspoken threats implicit in their recent letter to you are clearly understood.

Mr. McMullen, I applaud the courage and wisdom you displayed in your response to MDAGSA:

“...That is why our long-standing policy on this issue is to follow state and local laws and to urge customers to be respectful of others while shopping to feed their families. We know that our customers are passionate on both sides of this issue and we trust them to be responsible in our stores."

Thank you for this stand. Please know that I will do my best to patronize your stores and encourage others with whom I am acquainted to do so as well. Your response is the epitome of the common sense for which MDAGSA and other such organizations claim to be searching; you have shown them what it looks like.

Sincerely,


Kroger's fax number is 513-762-1575. I encourage everyone on this forum who supports their stated position on firearms carry to do the same, and encourage everyone you know to also contact them to show their support.

 

[CharlesMorrison]

Watch out people!
I got this email today from MDA....


I'm on my way to drop off nearly 300,000 petition signatures at a Kroger store in Cincinnati right now, and volunteers from Moms Demand Action are delivering petitions in a dozen other states at the same time.

Together, we're delivering a promise: We won't back down until Kroger stops letting customers openly carry guns in stores.

Can you get our back? It'd make a huge impact if while we're delivering petitions across the country, Kroger is hearing from you on the phone.

Please call Kroger right now and ask them to adopt a gun sense policy.

Can't make a call? Donate to help us step up the pressure on Kroger.

Kroger has received more than 10,000 calls from supporters like you. But gun extremists are placing thousands of calls as well, and we can't afford to cede any ground. We have to keep calling.

Even if you've called before, please call again. Tell the customer service rep that you're one of the nearly 300,000 people who signed the petition -- and you're demanding action.

If you or your family shops at any of the Kroger-owned stores such as Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Smith's, Dillons or QFC, then I'm asking you to speak out.

Use our online call tool to be connected directly or dial 888-829-3790.

Can't call now, but want to help keep the campaign going? Click here to make a gift right now to support the fight.

It's time for Kroger to take a stand for customer safety and join the growing number of companies that are have gun sense, including Target, Starbucks, Panera, Chipotle, Chili's, Jack in the Box, Sonic Drive-In -- and Kroger competitor New Seasons Market.

With your help, we'll convince another American businesses that gun sense means good business.

Thanks for pitching in,

Michele Mueller
Ohio Chapter Leader
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America


Everytown for Gun Safety is a movement of Americans fighting for common-sense gun policies. We are moms, mayors, survivors, and concerned citizens.

We depend on contributions from supporters like you to fund our work to reduce gun violence.

This is my reply to MDA.....

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[ezkl2230]

Watch out people!
I got this email today from MDA....


I'm on my way to drop off nearly 300,000 petition signatures at a Kroger store in Cincinnati right now, and volunteers from Moms Demand Action are delivering petitions in a dozen other states at the same time.

Together, we're delivering a promise: We won't back down until Kroger stops letting customers openly carry guns in stores.

Can you get our back? It'd make a huge impact if while we're delivering petitions across the country, Kroger is hearing from you on the phone.

Please call Kroger right now and ask them to adopt a gun sense policy.

Can't make a call? Donate to help us step up the pressure on Kroger.

Kroger has received more than 10,000 calls from supporters like you. But gun extremists are placing thousands of calls as well, and we can't afford to cede any ground. We have to keep calling.

Even if you've called before, please call again. Tell the customer service rep that you're one of the nearly 300,000 people who signed the petition -- and you're demanding action.

If you or your family shops at any of the Kroger-owned stores such as Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Smith's, Dillons or QFC, then I'm asking you to speak out.

Use our online call tool to be connected directly or dial 888-829-3790.

Can't call now, but want to help keep the campaign going? Click here to make a gift right now to support the fight.

It's time for Kroger to take a stand for customer safety and join the growing number of companies that are have gun sense, including Target, Starbucks, Panera, Chipotle, Chili's, Jack in the Box, Sonic Drive-In -- and Kroger competitor New Seasons Market.

With your help, we'll convince another American businesses that gun sense means good business.

Thanks for pitching in,

Michele Mueller
Ohio Chapter Leader
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America


Everytown for Gun Safety is a movement of Americans fighting for common-sense gun policies. We are moms, mayors, survivors, and concerned citizens.

We depend on contributions from supporters like you to fund our work to reduce gun violence.

This is my reply to MDA.....

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Like I said - if we haven't already contacted Kroger to show our support, shopped at Kroger and encouraged everyone we know to do the same, we need to do it NOW! Certainly we can turn out more than 300,000 Pro-Second Amendment supporters to counter this attack!

 

[sdprof]

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Hope there are more managers out there like this!

 

[audiophile]

I find it strange that MDA keeps mentioning Target, Starbucks and Chili's. None of which post gun buster or firearms prohibited signs on the doors here at local locations by me.

 

[longslide10]

Armed robber victimizes customer in Kroger bathroom; Bloomberg Moms silent

Hamilton, Ohio's Journal-News is reporting that a man reported being robbed in a bathroom at a Kroger store in Butler County - an incident that is drawing national attention due to claims by Michael Bloomberg's Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America that there is never a need to carry a firearm for self-defense in or near a grocery store.

From the article:

A suspect who reportedly robbed a customer at a grocery store here Monday night remains at large.

The incident was reported around 7:15 p.m. at Kroger Marketplace, 7300 Yankee Road, in the Liberty Commons shopping center, according to the Lt. Morgan Dallman of the Butler County Sheriff’s Office Liberty Twp. substation.

When the man entered the restroom, another man put what he believed was a gun to the back of his head and demanded money. The man relinquished his wallet to the suspect and the suspect fled the scene.

The man immediately reported the robbery to police, telling investigators that the subject told him he had a gun, but that he did not get to look at the subject during the robbery.

“He was afraid to face him given the shock of thinking there was a gun pointing at him,” said Capt. Mike Craft of the sheriff’s office.

According to BearingArms.com, this is the third violent crime in or near a Kroger in recent weeks, with a teen mob beating a customer and two employees unconscious in Memphis, TN, and a man shooting a robber in self-defense in Kroger parking lot in Indianapolis, Indiana, just miles from the home of Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts.

No business is immune to crime, and this article is certainly not meant to single out Kroger, a Cincinnati-based company which has refused attempts by the Bloomberg Moms group to bully the company into adopting a "no-guns" victim zone policy. But given the media attention the anti-gun rights Moms group is generating about Kroger, people are naturally going to take special note of any crimes that occur in the stores.

Billionaire Bloomberg's newly-minted gun control groups, which includes the $50 million Moms and Everytown for Gun Safety, aren't getting off to a very good start, especially for groups that, like their predecessor Mayors Against Illegal Guns, didn't start with the grassroots and are simply PR smoke and mirrors.

At the time it was launched in April, and despite the fact that he can afford to hire the finest public relations experts available, Bloomberg's $50 million "Everytown" campaign forgot to secure a Facebook page - and had to threaten to sue when a Second Amendment supporter created one himself, using it to show what REAL gun safety is. The page accumulated more than 20,000 fans in just a couple of days, and state-level "off-shoot" pages began popping up all over the country.

Next, one of the group's board members, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, quit the group, citing his discomfort with some of the political work the group was planning.

Later, the group made headlines when former MAIG boss Mark Glaze admitted to the Wall Street Journal that “it is a messaging problem” for gun control groups like Everytown “when a mass shooting happens and nothing that we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting.”

Soon thereafter, the group released a list of 74 supposed school shootings that had occurred since the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. It was soon revealed by journalist Charles C. Johnson, however, that not only did some of them not take place on campuses but that “fewer than 7 of the 74 school shootings listed by #Everytown are mass shootings,” that one or more probably didn’t happen at all, that at least one was actually a case of self-defense, and that 32 could be classified as “school shootings” only if, as National Review's Charles C. W. Cooke put it, we are to twist the meaning of the term beyond all recognition.

Everytown's latest PR boondoggle is a commercial which depicts a woman calling 911 as her ex-husband kicks in the door, grabs her child and puts a gun to her head. The problem for the people in "Everytown" is that almost NO ONE in real towns who watched the commercial came away with the idea that everything would have turned out ok if only the bad guy didn't have a gun. Instead, most viewers - including several panelists on ABC's The View - found themselves wishing that the mother in the commercial DID have a gun.

Before the Kroger crime incidents, Bloomberg's Moms group suffered a PR blow when, in response to their attempts to intimidate national corporations into discriminating against a large segment of their customer base who carry guns for self-defense, more than 57,000 smaller businesses recognized an opportunity to win over new customers by hanging up the "welcome" signs. While they have claimed success in cases involving Starbucks, Target, Sonic and Chipotle, the truth is that not one of these corporations have posted "no-guns" signs in response to the Bloomies' efforts.



- See more at: Armed robber victimizes customer in Kroger bathroom; Bloomberg Moms silent | Buckeye Firearms Association

 

[ezkl2230]

Here is a photo of "all the 'moms'" who showed up to protest at Kroger's shareholder meeting. I really like the one wearing a cape. :jester: There are about 2 dozen in attendance.

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They did supposedly manage to get 300,000 signatures on a petition they delivered to Kroger, so we need to make sure we show our support for them. If you wonder who they are,

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Lies their supporters are telling - including a survivor of the Giffords shooting, Mary Reed:

“My gunman went into the grocery store, and was there for 15 minutes with a gun in the back of his pants, but it didn’t raise any eyebrows because guns are common in my hometown,” said Reed.

The shooting was front and center on national news for weeks, but something that you may not know is that for about 15 minutes before the gunman in Tucson fired into a crowd and at a member of Congress, he openly carried his weapons through the aisles of a grocery store for all to see. This is behavior that Kroger considers acceptable inside its stores.

The "weapons" she is talking about is a single glock 19 with 31 round magazines that he supposedly "openly carried" into the Safeway store. However, the sheriff deputy who saw the store security video during his investigation said,

The pistol “is down near his right side, but it is visibly out from where he was keeping it, presumably under his clothing, and then he raises it and fires,” Mr. Kastigar said.

It wasn't carried openly in the small of his back, as Reed seems to indicate, it was carried concealed.

I want to know why the security cam video or at least stills from the video showing the shooter in the store before the shooting have never been released.

 

[ezkl2230]

Boo hoo, Kroger won't give me the time of day. That's the essence of an op-ed she wrote for HuffPo:

For months, Moms have called on Kroger to make a safer and more family-friendly shopping environment by prohibiting the open carry of firearms in its stores, just as brands including Target, Starbucks, and Panera have done.

Instead of meeting with us and reconsidering an irresponsible policy, Kroger's leadership has refused to listen. They have pressured radio stations to reject our ads and relocated their annual investor meeting to avoid interacting with customers. Just imagine how much easier it would have been if they would talk with us.

This week, Kroger executives and investors met in Cincinnati and I was there, along with dozens of Moms Demand Action volunteers from neighboring states, to make it as easy as possible for Kroger leadership to meet with us on an issue that women and mothers care about more than anything: the safety of our families. Rather than agree to a meeting, Kroger bullied radio stations into pulling our ads highlighting the absurdity of their gun policy (you can listen to the ads Link Removed and Link Removed). And this week, Kroger bussed its investors out of the hotel where they were planning to meet and to an alternate location -- probably to avoid the rally of mothers and customers we had organized to spark a conversation with them.

Evidently Kroger is growing uncomfortable with their gun policy, and frankly, they should be. Kroger is siding with gun extremists, rather than mothers, gun violence survivors, and the majority of Kroger shoppers, who support ending open carry in Kroger stores.

Moms refuse to be silenced. The ads that made Kroger so nervous are nothing more than recordings of Kroger employees reiterating Kroger's policy, which is to prohibit children's toys and household pets in the name of customer safety, but to allow anyone to openly carry loaded firearms, even though no permit, training, or background check is required to do so in most states.

Instead of working with us to make stores safer, Kroger has cited politicians' inaction to regulate open carry to justify their own stubborn refusal to institute a policy that does more than force employees and customers into a position where they must guess whether the armed individual in the frozen food aisle poses a threat to customers.

How are moms shopping with children expected to know the difference between an activist and a threat to our families? In a majority of states, it is completely legal to open carry a loaded gun in public without any training, permitting, or a background check. In some states, there isn't even an age requirement to open carry a loaded firearm.

That's why open carry poses a unique risk to the public. That's why we want Kroger to act, just as so many other major companies have done. And Link Removed.

When I founded Moms Demand Action the day after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, I knew that it would be a long road towards gun safety. Since then, millions of Americans have joined this fight and we will continue to be relentless whenever we feel the safety of our children is threatened.

Kroger's customers deserve to be heard and Moms won't stop until we get the change we need.

No, Kroger isn't "growing uncomfortable with their gun policy," Watts just can't get it through her head that, just as Kroger has the "right" to DISCONTINUE a practice, it well within their RIGHT to do what they have said already said they are GOING to do - CONTINUE THEIR POLICY TO ALLOW FIREARMS CARRY. She needs to get that through her head! Watts only recognizes the rights of Kroger as they comport with her agenda, and she can't handle it that Kroger has the temerity to defy her and her sugar daddy, Bloomberg. She certainly can't reconcile the FACT that, since Kroger announced their intent to continue their policy, their sales have increased 21% with her supposed poll results indicating that 83% of Kroger customers agree with her point of view. Reality stinks, doesn't it Shannon!

 

[BC1]

Fixing this is ever-so-simple.......... Use the police and the power of the courts.
.
.
Michele Mueller
Ohio Chapter Leader
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
.
Ms. Mueller:
.
Pursuant to the gun policy petitions your group has sent Kroger, we hereby request you do not contact the company again regarding this matter. Further communications may be regarded as harassment and the company intends to pursue such acts to the fullest extent of the law. Any person found on Kroger property for purposes of protest or business disruption will be referred to law enforcement as a trespass complaint.
.
In addition, public statements made by your organization, whether written, verbal or quotes published by news media outlets, which are deemed by our management to be libelous or slanderous to the Kroger Company will be referred to our attorneys for aggressive civil action.
.
Please cease and desist these acts at once.
.
Respectfully submitted,
Kroger Executives and Board