Target has become embroiled in the battle over open carry gun laws after a demonstration at one of its Texas stores. Moms Demand Action has put pressure on several chains to ban openly carried guns and is now targeting Target. While Target says customer and employee safety is a top priority, it does not have a policy against openly carried guns and will follow state and federal laws. The demonstration has highlighted divisions within gun rights supporters, as the NRA initially denounced the open carry demonstrations as "foolish" but then retracted its statement after backlash from open carry groups in Texas.

1. Target Gets Drawn Into Gun Rights Battle
Open carry demonstration at a Target store in Texas in March Facebook screenshots via Moms
Demand Action.
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."

2. "We like baby toys!" one open carry supporter chimed in on Facebook.
"Hell, yeah," said another.
"Hey Mom's Demand Action! Suck on this!" said another.
Open Carry Texas hasn't hesitated to get ugly with opponents: As I reported in mid May, the group's
leader has referred to the women of Moms Demand Action as "ignorant, retarded people" and "thugs
with jugs," and its members have harassed and degraded women in disturbing ways.
"We expect to be safe and secure when we wheel our
kids around in Target's red shopping carts," Shannon
Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action said on
Wednesday. "We support the Second Amendment, but
people walking through the aisles flaunting their
loaded weapons is unacceptable. We're asking one of
our country's largest retailers, a store that American
moms flock to, to follow the lead of Chipotle and
Starbucks and make a clear statement that open carry
of firearms is not welcome in their stores."
Target appears to have no specific policy regarding guns being brought into its stores. "The safety
and security of our guests and team members is our highest priority," a company spokeswoman told
the Wall Street Journal late Tuesday. She further noted that Target does not sell firearms or
ammunition, and that the company "is committed to following all state and federal laws."
Although no state is a greater champion of gun rights than Texas, by late last week it appeared that
the National Rifle Association could no longer abide by the antics of Open Carry Texas and its allies.
In an extraordinary move first reported by Mother Jones, the NRA issued a lengthy statement
denouncing the open carry demonstrations as "foolishness" and "downright weird." But less than 24
hours later--after the Texas activists pushed back hard and began telling their supporters to abandon
the NRA--the gun lobby relented, apologizing for and essentially retracting the whole thing,
suggesting it had been the handiwork of a rogue employee. The NRA's top lobbyist Chris Cox called
the post "a mistake" and said that it had been written by "a staffer"--whose identity Cox did not
disclose--who'd "expressed his personal opinion." Cox emphasized that the NRA officially supports
open carry and he apologized for "any confusion" the post had caused.