Like most Americans, I prefer to stir my coffee by shooting it repeatedly with a handgun that I keep concealed under my sport coat.

Shoot-stirring is efficient, adds a nice gunpowdery taste and is far more environmentally friendly than those wasteful wooden stir sticks.

Sadly, though, I can no longer bring my Browning Hi Power 9 mm pistol/latte frother into a Starbucks coffee shop. Company CEO Howard Schultz announced last week that guns are not welcome at any Starbucks location.

This prompted my good friends at the Illinois State Rifle Association to say in a statement that Schultz's decision made his employees "fair game for urban thugs, murderers, robbers and rapists."

"Schultz has declared Starbucks stores to be pacifist oases inhabited by persons unwilling to defend themselves against violent crime," the statement read.

The association is right. This decision demolishes the hard-edged, bad-guy-beware atmosphere people have long associated with Starbucks, turning the shops into havens for placid yuppies and peacenik poets. And that's like chum for armed villains.

The Illinois rifle association's executive director, Richard Pearson, was quoted in the statement saying: "In short, it will be just too dangerous to hang out in a Starbucks store."

Of course it's not just Starbucks. There are restaurants, independent coffee shops and various other businesses across Illinois making decisions on how to handle the state's recently passed concealed carry law.

And gun advocates are quick to pounce on establishments that say "no guns allowed."

"When you indicate you don't want firearms in any place, you make it a magnet for bad people," Pearson said in an interview.

He explained that once Illinois begins issuing concealed carry permits — likely to happen sometime in 2014 — the bad guys will never know who might be packing heat. And that's a surefire deterrent.

Following that thinking to its logical conclusion, if the rifle association can convince all other businesses in Illinois to allow guns, gun-related crime will soon be happening only in Starbucks stores. That should make it easier for police to fight crime, albeit harder for citizens to get pumpkin spice lattes.

Some Starbucks-loving pacifists might suggest that restaurants and coffee shops aren't prime targets for violent crime. To that, Pearson said: "You can't predict where these things are going to happen. They can happen anywhere, at any time, at any hour. And it's hard to avoid an attack when the attacker has all the advantages."

I pointed out to Pearson that while weapons have to be concealed, it's still possible for people to see that a person is carrying a gun. What about those who just aren't comfortable around guns?

He said everyone needs to relax. The people who have concealed carry permits will be "well vetted," and citizens should be no more fearful of them than they would be of an armed police officer.

"If you look at (police training) qualifications, we have the same qualifications, almost," he said.

If having armed, highly trained almost police sitting near you at a coffee shop doesn't make your biscotti taste safer, you just don't get America.

Of course the real victims here are the law-abiding gun owners who, thanks to Starbucks and other gun-discriminating businesses, are going to be wildly inconvenienced.

Pearson presented a possible scenario where a gun owner is out and about, running errands and whatnot, and then decides to stop for a coffee.

"You're going to have to take your firearm off and leave it in the car," he said. "That's a big inconvenience for the gun owner."

It sure is. And that got me thinking about another inconvenience: parking my car.

Why the heck do I have to go to the trouble of parking my car, getting out of my car and walking into a business when I could just as easily drive my car into that business? I am, after all, a licensed automobile operator with decades of experience. If people sitting around in the business that I drive my car into aren't also in their cars, they can trust me to navigate around them safely.

Plus, if a criminal comes along and drives a car into that business, I would be there — in my car — able to block the criminal, or at least put some very unsightly dents in his door.

Perhaps what we need to worry about is not why some businesses won't allow guns, but why all business don't allow cars. Gun owners could bring their guns anywhere because their guns would be in their cars. People fearful of guns would be less likely to see them, and better prepared to drive off really fast if they did.

Sometimes the simplest solution is right in front of us. I encourage the Illinois State Rifle Association to run with the following slogan: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun in his car who drives that car into a Starbucks is a good guy with a gun in his car who also drives his car into a Starbucks."

OK, that slogan might need a little massaging. I'm going to shoot it a few times and see if that helps.

rhuppke@tribune.com