Thinking about buying furniture?
Scratch IKEA off your list of potential stores to shop if you’re a gun owner and we’ll tell you why: IKEA doesn’t want your business because they really, really don’t like guns.
How much does IKEA dislike the idea of card-carrying good guys packing heat in their stores?
Enough that they asked a uniformed police officer to leave his gun outside when he was shopping in their store with his child.
Just like Denny’s restaurant in Belleville, IL asked police officers to take their guns outside on New Year’s Day 2013, IKEA joined the ranks of the clinically insane with their July 4th ejection of a police officer in uniform in College Park, Washington shopping between work assignments with his daughter.
Yes, on Independence Day, a loss-prevention officer at the College Park, Washington IKEA store told a uniformed cop – actually the police chief from nearby Takoma Park – to either leave his gun outside or leave the store as the store has a “Weapons-Free Environment”.
We’ll let NBC Washington pick up the story from there.
In 35 years in law enforcement, says the Takoma Park Police chief, he’s never had this happen.
He’s never had a store tell him that he would have to leave his service weapon in the car or leave the store — especially when he was in his police uniform.
But that’s what happened July 4 in the Ikea in College Park, where Takoma Park Police Chief Alan Goldberg had stopped in with his daughter. Goldberg was in uniform because he had worked that morning at the city’s July 4 parade, and would be back on duty that night for fireworks.
Takoma Park Police Chief Alan Goldberg said he was given two choices: Lock his gun in his car in a commercial parking lot, or leave Ikea.
In between, he stopped at Ikea to shop for furniture for his daughter’s new apartment. And that’s when a loss-prevention officer at the store approached him.
“He says we have a no firearms policy, and you’re either going to have to leave or you can lock your gun in the car,” Goldberg said.
The store has signs posted on the front door that read “Weapons Free Environment.”
Neither of those options seemed a good one to the officer. “It isn’t the most prudent thing to do to walk around the store in uniform with an empty holster,” he said. “And I am not going to lock my gun in a commercial parking lot, with people watching me put it in there. That’s just ludicrous.”
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