Boycott Panera - Their CEO has blood on his hands
The Market Ticker
2016-02-14 06:00 by Karl Denninger

http://market-ticker.org/

On Monday, Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich publicly announced that customers should not bring guns into the bakery-cafe chain’s stores.

Two days later, a criminal pulled a gun and fatally shot a police officer inside a Panera restaurant in Abingdon, Maryland. He then fled the store and engaged responding police in a gunfight, killing another before being killed himself.

It took two entire days before the fact -- that gun-free zones only stop law abiding citizens from carrying defensive weapons -- to be evidenced in the form of a nut with a gun getting into a gunfight in one of his stores.

The only person with a gun other than the nut was a police officer, which of course Panera's CEO "exempted." There's no guarantee, of course, that had ordinary citizens in the store been armed there would have been a better outcome -- given where this happened, in Maryland, where disrespect of the Second Amendment runs deep, long and serious, that's unlikely -- but the lesson remains no-less true.

Criminals do not respect either the law or requests, which is why we call them criminals.

You don't put the little light and photocell near the floor on your garage door when you install an opener because it guarantees you won't try to close the door on a person or object. You do so because it increases the odds of the bad outcome not happening.

Likewise, you have a fire extinguisher in your home (I hope!) not because expect to have a fire or because it guarantees a fire will not occur and burn down your house, but because if you do have a fire you might be able to put it out before serious damage occurs.

People have the right to keep and bear arms, and should not patronize any establishment that disrespects same, nor should they tolerate any damned "permitting" system including the politicians that demand same not because owning and/or carrying a gun is a guarantee that you'll be able to stop a thug or terrorist, but because if a terrorist or thug appears where you are and tries to commit a serious felony you might be able to effectively stop him or her, either preventing or limiting the damage they can cause.

Incidentally, there is a Panera that happens to be right at the halfway mark of a bike ride across the MidBay bridge that I often do in the spring and fall months. Fortunately there are easily a dozen other conveniently-located places to eat within a half-mile of there, and there is a zero chance that I will eat at Panera so long as this CEO and his policies remain in force.