In an interview airing tonight on ABC’s Nightline, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says he feels that both gun control and firearms advocacy groups are only using the coffee company to make a point about their particular agendas and that he never envisioned customers wanting to carry their gun into a Starbucks.

“No, certainly not,” Schultz tells Nightline’s Terry Moran. “But, you know I’m not a politician, you know, I run a coffee company and we’re trying to abide by the laws in which we do business.”

When asked point blank whether or not he felt customer should be allowed to carry their guns into his stores, Schultz answered:

In the last few weeks we woke up one day and all the sudden Starbucks was in the middle of this political cross fire between the people who want to bring a gun into Starbucks and the people who want to prevent it. The question is what should we do, what should we have done. So first and foremost is we have not changed the policy that we’ve had for 39 years and then we tried to understand what the law is and in 43 out of 50 states the law of the land is that you can do this. And then the other issue was do we want to put our people in a position where they have to be a referee or get into a confrontation with somebody who perhaps is or is not carrying. It is a very difficult, fragile situation, we’re trying to abide by the law.

To see the whole interview, tune in to Nightline tonight at 11:35pm ET on ABC.

Exclusive: Starbucks CEO Says Guns at Odds with Vision for Company [ABC]

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