Bookshop’s prices shot down 10% for customers openly carrying guns

A bookshop in Texas is offering a 10% discount to customers who are legally “open carrying” a handgun while shopping for new reading material.

Brave New Books, which says it stocks a mix of “conspiracy, economic policy, history, and politics” books, as well as “selections about sustainability, survival [and] preparedness”, made the announcement in late January. It follows the loosening of gun restrictions in Texas at the start of the year, allowing the visible carrying of handguns.

“Brave New Books is the only open carry friendly bookstore in Austin TX and now we have a special promotion where we are offering 10% off all purchases when legally open carrying a handgun. Be sure to recognise the four firearms rules while at Brave,” wrote the store on Facebook.

Brave New Books, which describes itself as “anti-war, anti-state and pro-market”, also hosted an “open carry and firearms freedom symposium” last weekend to answer questions about the legislation. “We’ll here [sic] from owner of Central Texas Gun Works, Michael Cargill. We’ll take part in a firearms safety course from our good friend Stephen Sheftall. And we will hear from a panel of gun rights activists about the latest in the fight for firearms freedom in Texas,” the shop wrote. “And for a limited time only if you come in to Brave New Books safely open carrying a firearm, you can get 10% off anything in the store! That’s right. We want to celebrate your decision to take security in to your own hands by giving you 10% off any product in the store for safely open carrying your firearm.”

General manager John Bush told KVUE: “We appreciate it when people take security and defence into their own hands. In a world where mass shootings are happening more and more, when seconds count, it’s up to we the people to protect our community.”

Other bookshops in the city have taken a different approach, said KVUE: Half-Price Books and Book People have both said no to customers open carrying in their stores. But publisher Melville House, on its blog MobyLives, speculated that Brave New Books’s move looked less like a “political stand” than a “canny marketing stunt that preaches to the converted”.

“Brave New Books, whose Twitter bio states correctly, albeit ironically, that ‘books are weapons in the war of ideas’, caters to a particular and avowedly libertarian clientele,” wrote Liam O’Brien, pointing to manager Bush as a “a vocal activist and one-time Tea Partier who spearheads a programme called Lone Star Libertopia to encourage libertarian activists to set up shop in central Texas”.

“Using the new open carry law – and its ensuing controversy – to tout the virtues of your specialty bookstore is good marketing, but it doesn’t carry the political risk it might should a general-interest bookstore provide a similar incentive to bring guns shopping. However, hosting a symposium at the store sounds like a sage and well-intentioned follow-up,” said O’Brien. “Yet there remains a core challenge in discussing guns: it’s hard to have an open, honest, and multivalent conversation about them when they’re strapped to the hip of the person facing you.”

Jeremy Ellis from Houston bookshop Brazos Bookstore told Melville House that he had taken the decision to post signs restricting open carrying on 1 January. “I have always believed that bookstores are forums for all ideas, but I also understand that the free exchange of those ideas can be hindered (if not entirely obstructed) when one party in the conversation holds a deadly weapon,” said Ellis. “I would rather regulate the guns than the conversation, so we respectfully request that all our patrons leave their firearms at home or in their cars while shopping with us.”