Progress in gun safety and gun control does happen in America, but slowly. When I wrote an April 11, 2010, Voices piece decrying the blatant “open carry” of weapons into Montecito’s Starbucks, a lot of the 104 comments were pretty harsh and derisive.

I’m happy to say that not only has California clamped down on the open carry of weapons in our state, after three and a half years the whole Starbucks chain has now been told by CEO-guru Howard Schultz that guns are no longer welcome at Starbucks cafés.

Happily, this is an important trend. And we’ve seen Colorado make some important gun safety laws. How sad, however, that it takes more mass killings like the one September 16 at the Washington Navy Yard to get supposedly “progressive” institutions like Starbucks to step up to the plate and do something significant.

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