Westfield Shoppingtowns, A National Call to Action!

[Gray Peterson]

After recent events in Washington State, I have decided that that I'm sick and tired of the malls that continually ban guns from their property.

Malls in a lot of ways are special in a sense of property ownership, and almost hostage-taking in a sense. Even if a tenant wanted to allow carry in their store, they are not allowed to per mall policies which totally prohibit carry except by law enforcement.

Malls also do not pay attention to complaining shoppers, unless it falls into one of their specifically defined "no-nos". They view that gun owners are a throw-away constituency that no one will care about.

I plan to prove them wrong.

I need volunteers. I certainly have people in Seattle, Olympia, and Vancouver, but I need a nationwide effort in the malls that have shall-issue laws or may issue laws that have reasonable issue near them.

Westfield Malls in the US

I need volunteers for the following metro areas:

Sacramento, CA (Yolo and other surrounding counties are shall-issue)
Los Angeles-Orange-San Diego Metroplex, CA (Orange County is reasonable issue)
New Haven and Fairfield County, CT
Tampa/St. Petersburg, FL
Sarasota, FL
Hobart/Merrillville, IN (Westfield Southlake)
St. Louis Metro area, MO
Lincoln, NE
Charlotte and Burlington, NC
Canton, Cleveland, and Toledo, OH

What am I asking everyone to do?

I will be creating form letters to the store managers of every store in a mall in said state. Each state's form letter will be customized to a particular state's situation (CA and FL being nominally concealed only states and California being may-issue). I am at the moment ignoring Illinois, New Jersey, and New York for obvious reasons, and some portions of California.

The point of the form letters is to point out that because of the mall's anti-gun policies prohibiting lawful concealed and open carry, you cannot shop there and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars in merchandise at their store, and you are forced to either go to another place that respects your open carry rights nationally (Like Walmart's nationwide policy of no policy) or to another one of their store chain that is either a stand alone store or at a mall that has no policy.

Though malls tend not to listen to shoppers (they are only indirectly effected by the people who are kicked out), they do tend to listen to the store managers who are telling them that they are unhappy that they are turning away a potential dollar source.

Retail stores are not only in competition with actual competitors, they are also in competition within the same company, doing their best to outsell the other stores, and with mall rent being high, they need every dollar they can get to survive, or they lose their jobs.

With anything retail, any dollar that is potentially lost is a bad thing, and especially when these stores in malls have to compete with the stand alones, not to mention jewelry stores, and so on....

You get the picture.

I want to warn all of you: This isn't going to be easy, or cheap. Also, you will have to go into the mall and go to every store, ask for a store manager or manager on duty, and hand them the letter. Whatever form letters are drafted, has to make sure that it defeats any sort of legal stuff that the mall management will throw to scuttle the idea. I'm thinking two pages at least to each store manager, etc etc.

Not to mention, also hitting the same thing on the corporate HQ's via mail in regards to the mall situation.

Any takers or volunteers?

 

[Technosavant]

I have yet to see a Westfield in the STL area with a sign. They may post elsewhere, but they don't do it here.

 

[Gray Peterson]

They don't have signs out here in Washington, however they do have little mall rule cards and it posted inside certain places.

Check again.

 

[Duncan223]

I've been to the Westfield malls in Tampa/St. Pete and Sarasota do have never noticed any signs prohibiting lawful concealed carry. I will check the stores out over the next week just to make sure nothing has changed since Christmas.

 

[Technosavant]

They don't have signs out here in Washington, however they do have little mall rule cards and it posted inside certain places.

Entirely possible, but who reads those?

Around here (MO Law), if it isn't posted at all entrances with a 11x17" sign with letters at least 1" high, it isn't posted. Period. So if they really want to ban legally carried firearms from their Missouri places of business, they are ignoring the one and only way which they can use to do it. Anything else doesn't apply.

Several places (like movie theaters) have "no weapons" listed in small print in those codes of conduct, but if they don't have signs that conform to the above, then CCW is NOT prohibited. The assumption is that they post those for the teenagers- what adult looks at (or even needs to look at) such things?

It might be binding in your state, but if they don't do it here (and they don't while a couple of other malls do), then I'm thinking it isn't a corporate anti-CCW policy, it's just a legal CYA thing for the kiddos.