this is an open letter that howard schultz penned. it will run in newspapers across the country tomorrow morning, and he is not banning guns but saying, we do not want them in our stores. we talked to him about why. listen. why are you doing this, and why are you doing it right now? i think it s important to start the conversation by framing the fact that starbucks is not a policy-maker and we re not pro or anti-gun. however, we do believe that guns should not be part of the starbucks experience. as a result of that, making that decision, we are respectfully requesting that those customer whoz are carrying a gun just honor the request and not bring the gun into starbucks. we re also saying something else. this is not a ban. the reason it s not a ban is that we don t want to put our own people in a position of having to confront somebody who s carrying a weapon. so those customers who will bring in the gun we hope they