Bearing Arms breaks the story that Raising Cain’s Chicken Fingers has told Mom’s Demand Action to take a hike. I attribute this to two factors. First, Kroger has shown that it’s possible for a mass market brand to stand up to Mom’s Demand Action without suffering any real consequences. Second, as Bearing Arms mentions, Open Carry Texas has realized the problems with that kind of protesting and effectively stopped doing it. MDA has been forced to go through years old pictures on the Internet in order to find some pretext for putting pressure on a new chain, and it hasn’t been working. I think it’s safe to say, if this car MDA is driving hasn’t run completely out of gas yet, the engine is definitely starting to sputter. I think MDA is find out how hopeless they really are if they don’t have help from our side.
MDA Shot Down Again
I have for 40 years carried a key in my wallet for each of the vehilces I own. When I bought my most recent new vehicle I tried to get them to not put in the ignition that is tied to a smart chip in the key. They refused claiming they couldn’t do it. SO I have a key for the Jeep in my wallet but it will only open the doors it won’t allow me to drive the vehicle. That is what my smart key does for me. If I use the Jeep to drive desert roads and somehow lose my “smart” key then my car becomes useless. So… what is smart abut it?
A key system is easier to make reliable in a car. I wouldn’t honestly worry about it in that context. The smart key is probably just as reliable as a traditional key.
The latest iterations of “smart keys” are a boon for me, since the key doesn’t have to leave my pocket, and thus chance getting lost or forgotten. OTOH, I don’t leave the house (literally) without some kind of jacket/vest with a pocket where my keys live and another where my wallet lives, as a defense against absent-mindedness.
The passive-chip systems are entirely reliable; as I once discovered after losing one of the keys to my Taurus in foot-deep snow one winter, and not finding it again for 3 months. It still worked despite being exposed to most of a winter’s worth of weather. A battery-powered fob would probably have killed the button functions of the fob, but the chip itself would still have worked and the key could still be used to phsyically unlock and start the car.
Let’s be careful here – nowhere have I seen a representative of Cane’s say “Take a hike MDA we support our customer’s rights to open carry”. All they said was what Starbucks once said: Leave us out of this.
I will say it wouldn’t take much of our “support” to potentially push them further in the Starbucks direction where they are forced to take a stronger position.