Staples, the Office Supply chain, has denied a local gun store its application to participate in a contest for small businesses. Yes, I know. A Town of about 
9 square miles with the population of Merrimack New Hampshire (Fremont Nebraska), happens to have (a least one) gun store in it run by two Army veterans; sounds like a small business to me. So why can’t this small business participate in a contest for small businesses?
Staples has rules for its contests and their bureaucracy appears to be as intellectually agile as any other. That is to say, not at all. In a denial letter to the gun shop, from staples, (excerpted here) we find the fly in the ointment.
Entry contains content that promotes alcohol, illegal drugs, tobacco, firearms/weapons (or the use of any of the foregoing); promotes any activities that may appear unsafe or dangerous; promotes any particular political agenda or message; is obscene or offensive; or endorses any form of hate or hate group.
But Staples not only sells “weapons”…it allows them to get into the hands of convicted criminals.
CLOVIS — A Curry County officer is stabbed in the face with a pencil by an inmate. Officers say accused killer Jimmy Reagan also tried to escape. It happened on March 9th, when Reagan asked to have trash removed from his cell. When the officer showed up, he was attacked. Reagan allegedly stabbed the officer in the face and ran for the door.
Bullies use them to intimidate our children.
Crystal Romero said it has been going on since the first day of school, but things were taken to a new level last week when her son was stabbed in the back with a pencil. “(A student) came and he grabbed (my son) by the shoulder, and he (jabs the pencil) right over (my son’s back),” Romero said.
So the moral of this story? Staples hates vets.
Well it can’t be because of the rules about weapons, clearly. An office supply store is nothing more than a well-lit weapons depot with office furniture.
Seriously, Staples. Can we agree that these things are just tools that can be abused by people engaging in unlawful acts like any other implement of modern society (even government?), but that this alone does not define the tool as good or bad, nor does it define all people within arms reach of that tool either?
Maybe we need to consider a magazine restriction on number twos? Staplers that hold no more than seven staples (individually micro-stamped), and how about a lengthy background check on any office store product that had ever been used as a weapon or in a crime? I think the length of the pencils is an issue we need to address so people can’t grab them like a dirk and impale others with them. Or maybe congress should limit the pointyness?
I’m being silly, of course, but do you see how these things won’t ever stop someone who wants to break the law from doing so, with a gun, or a pencil, or a bat, or a pipe, or a fist?
So what if tens of millions of law-abiding gun owners disqualified Staples from their list of office supply stores they frequent because it ? What if they all sold their stock in Staples?
I don’t advocate boycotts, I just observe and report. Staples can have whatever contest rules it wants even if they lump law-abiding, small-business owning, army veterans in with criminals.
