“Kroger opened its largest store ever,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reported last week. “The $28 million … 145,000-square-foot store has a bulk natural foods department, a beer growler and wine bar, a baby center, and a pharmacy with two drive-through lanes. The store also has a fuel center and a Fred Meyer Jewelers.” . . .
“The Kroger Co. Friday announced a $433 million second quarter profit, a 24.8 percent increase from the same period a year ago,” the Enquirer also reported. “The company raised its profit and sales forecast for the year, prompting the stock to close at $37.29, up 5.3 percent or $1.89. The increase marked the Cincinnati-based supermarket retailer’s 47th straight quarter of rising market share.”
What does that news have to do with the reason readers come to The Truth About Guns? AWR Hawkins of Breitbart made an initial connection for us last December.
“In mid-August [2014] Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America launched a campaign pressuring Kroger to bar law-abiding citizens from openly carrying guns for self-defense in their stores,” Hawkins reminded us. “On that day Kroger subsidiary grocer Fred Meyer said it would not change its policies and less than two weeks later, Kroger said it would not be changing policies either. Both said they would continue to honor state and municipal laws at their store locations.”
Seeing as how that didn’t work, the Michael Bloomberg-funded group stepped up a multi-prong “shaming” campaign that Kroger refused to succumb to. The financial results show management made the right call – not only did MILM fury not impact Kroger’s sales, it may have actually improved them by motivating appreciative gun owners to give the company more business.
So much for the power of AstroTurf Everytown petitions “demanding” that Kroger alienate a significant portion of their customer base. The failure demonstrates the true power of indignant anti-gun harridans – non-existent. So much for all that Bloomberg money wasted on a slick advertising campaign wherein Demanding Moms and a cheerleading media did everything they could to get people to pay attention to them, evidently without changing any minds.
So much for phony polls with loaded questions designed to produce predetermined propaganda campaign results. So much for social media, where the Bloomberg-funded and promoted hashtag #groceriesnotguns has only been used about a dozen times so far this month. Maybe having “snot” in their message wasn’t the best tactic.
Still, maybe maybe the Moms have unwittingly stumbled on a way businesses could help improve their bottom lines: Tweet #boycottusnext to the Raging Moms and watch the money roll in. In the meantime, gun rights supporters can use the Kroger experience as a good example to remind the next extortion target of the Bloomberg machine what happens when businesses defy the hoplophobic harpies and stick to their guns.