IFC members are beginning to hear back from HyVee officials.

Initial Response

Less than a week ago the Iowa Firearms Coalition discovered the latest Everytown for Gun Safety scheme. As we first pointed out on October 23rd the anti-gunners are targeting HyVee grocery stores.

Apparently they have to do something after their boycott of Kroger grocery stores ended in a complete and utter failure.

Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, Michael Bloomberg and host of other state level gun control advocates are now calling on HyVee to ban open carry in their stores. After our initial alert we saw a wave of Iowa Firearms Coalition members reaching out to HyVee. Here’s just one of the responses our members shared with us (click the image for a full resolution image).

An initial response from HyVee to an Iowa Firearms Coalition member who contacted them. Note the importance of contacting your local store managers!

Local Store Managers Are Key

HyVee’s corporate policy is to adhere to state and local laws, which is good. But there’s a catch. HyVee lets each store decide if there’s any further restrictions that should be in place. As this particular email says…

“Autonomy is given to store directors, who we feel are in the best position to know those locals laws and gauge the sentiment of their neighborhood customers.”

We’ve added our own emphasis to that quote to highlight the most important part — store directors are the ones who determine whether or not bans such as this are taken up at HyVee grocery stores.

Moral of the story? Contacting the corporate offices is a great start, but if you really want to stop this gun ban non-sense you need to be contacting the HyVee store managers in your area.

Key Points to Emphasize

Because we know the anti-gunners resort to misinformation and mischaracterization we highly encourage you to contact your local store managers about any potential gun bans at their store. Remember to be polite. These anti-gunners work extremely hard to paint a picture that gun owners are callous thugs and bullies. We need prove them wrong, and the best way of doing that is by being polite and respectful while making our case to neutral parties like HyVee store managers.

When talking to store officials there’s a few key facts to point out:

1) Thank you for currently respecting the rights of all shoppers — including those who happen to be gun owners.

2) Gun control advocates are trying to very hard to mischaracterize gun owners as a threat.

3) Permit to Carry holders and gun owners are not the problem — criminals are — we’re law-abiding citizens going about our business in peace.

4) Everytown for Gun Safety tried boycotting Kroger Grocery Stores over this same issue. Kroger stood behind its policy and the Everytown boycott no negative impact on Kroger’s sales.

5) Please avoid the urge to ban gun. This does nothing but disarm and endanger your shoppers.

There’s more than 235 HyVees spread across eight Midwest states. We can’t list all of their contact info, but fortunately the HyVee website has a quick and easy tool to find contact info of stores near you.

The Big Picture

For some the concept of open carry can be quite controversial, but regardless of your personal opinions on matter don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. These campaigns to ban open carry in popular grocery stores are just the opening rounds in a much larger and ongoing fight to marginalize all firearms owners.

Anti-gunners, using out-of-touch 1% billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s money, are trying like mad to paint the picture that tens of millions of gun owning Americans are a threat to everyone’s safety. Therefore they must be banned from everyday places such as grocery stores, coffee shops, etc.. We all know that peaceful, law-abiding gun owners live and walk among us every single day with no ill effects. But while we recognize that, it’s important to remember that a very large portion of the population has no idea. Showing them that we gun owners are not what the murderous thugs and bullies Bloomberg drones try to portray us as is absolutely critical.

If you find this information useful in any way, please help the Iowa Firearms Coalition fight to protect and enhance our Second Amendment rights here in Iowa and abroad. We’re an all volunteer organization and we’d love to have you become an official member. You can sign up or make a donation on our membership page.

Iowa Firearms Coalition is an entirely volunteer, grassroots, Second Amendment advocacy group. Responsible for bringing uniformity to Iowa’s Concealed Weapons Permitting process, IFC’s members work to protect and enhance Second Amendment rights in Iowa. An affiliate of the National Rifle Association, the IFC actively seeks to foster and promote the shooting sports. Sign up for our email list for the latest on Second Amendment issues in Iowa. You can support our work by becoming a member, or making a donation.