By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
I haven’t been to a Publix grocery store since I learned that the massive southeastern grocery store chain doesn’t want its customers to carry firearms openly on its property or in its stores.
It doesn’t matter that I never carry openly. We have that specific right in Florida. If a store doesn’t want customers to exercise this right, we will shop elsewhere. It wasn’t a difficult decision, even though there are two Publix grocery stores within walking distance from my Sarasota home.
This policy is posted in a window and became well known: “Publix kindly asks that only law enforcement openly carry firearms in our stores.”
An X follower pointed out that Publix in Tennessee also banned open carry:
However, longtime friend, Richard Nascak, cofounder and executive director of Florida Carry, Inc., shared a post over the weekend showing how Publix’s decision to ban open carry appears to be geographically based. A Publix store in Georgia does not ban open carry:
This is certainly strange. Publix may be enforcing an open-carry ban in just some of the eight states where it operates.
I definitely needed to know more, so I reached out the Lindsey Willis, Publix’s media relations manager for central and south Florida.
Ms. Willis did not respond to calls or emails seeking comments.
I then reached out to Hannah Herring, Publix’s media director for north and central Florida, southern Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
Ms. Herring did not respond to calls or emails seeking comments.
Finally, I reached out to Maria Brous, the chain’s Director of Communications, who has worked for Publix for more than 35 years.
Like her two subordinates, Ms. Brous did not return calls or emails seeking comment.
Takeaways
Publix operates nearly 1,500 grocery stores in eight southeastern states. Florida, the chain’s home, has the most stores, more than 900.
Publix is one of the 10 largest grocery store chains in the country and employs more than a quarter-million people. Last year, its sales reached $62 billion.
Publix operates in states that strongly support their residents’ Second Amendment rights—absent the 24 properties in Virginia, at least for now.
So, why take away the right to openly carry firearms?
That remains a secret known only to a few upper-level staffers at the Publix headquarters in Lakeland, Florida.
Their response to the coverage of this massively important civil rights issue has been abysmal, but about what I expected.
To be clear, as store owners, they certainly have the right to ban the open carry of firearms at some of their properties, as well as the right to keep their reasons for the bans secret.
However, as customers, we certainly have the right to shop somewhere else, where the staff isn’t so afraid of a holstered firearm.
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