Well, actually, it's "Starbucks Appreciation Day," a repeat of February's “Gun Owners Support Starbucks Day.” Part of an impromptu campaign by the “I Love Guns and Coffee” folks. Why? Because the coffee-shop giant refused the Brady Campaign's request to make all Starbucks outlets gun free. The Brady Campaign seeks stiffer regulations on handguns. At the
Seattle Post Intelligencer:
“It’s a grassroots effort organized on Facebook,” said Jim Childers of Whidbey Arms, who laments that his his South Whidbey store is 40 miles from the nearest Starbucks outlet. [...]
“This is just to show when you carry, you’re not only expressing your rights, but to show good guys carry,” Ed Levine, head of a gun rights group in Northern Virginia, told the Washington Post.
Childers said he hopes for a demonstration of strength from Washington to Washington.
“All that’s going on is that gun owners will be openly carrying guns, and flocking to Starbucks and thanking them for following local, state and gun laws,” he said. “It is up to individual people to show up and express their opinions. This is a rally not driven by any national organization.”
In Washington state, HQ to both Starbucks and Whidbey Arms, it's easy to get a permit to carry a firearm concealed.
Zero training is required. Never fired a gun in your life? No problem. You can also carry a loaded firearm in the open without a permit as long as you're not in a place that is on a short list of restricted areas, which include schools, taverns and the grounds of an "outdoor music festival." That actually is more restrictive than a dozen other states where there are no restrictions on open carry.
Since Washington is a stand-your-ground state, presumably there will be no jumping the queue for the double caffè latte.
The Newtown Action Alliance—a Connecticut advocacy group that was put together after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre left 20 schoolchildren, six educators, the shooter's mother and the shooter dead—has asked any potential demonstrators not to show up at the town's one Starbucks outlet:
[That shop] served as an unofficial media work center in the days after the shooting of 20 children and six educators. The franchise is in close proximity to St. Rose of Lima Church, which hosted a prayer vigil the night of the Dec. 14 massacre and multiple funerals for the victims.
By the way, that no-training-required, concealed-carry permit that Washington issues to any resident who isn't an ex-convict or adjudged mentally dangerous is accepted in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.