Back in 2018, big companies rushed to strengthen their gun safety policies after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
Dick's Sporting Goods stopped selling semi-automatic assault-style rifles at stores. Citigroup put new restrictions on gun sales by business customers.
A year later, after mass shootings at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and a nightclub in Dayton, Ohio, Walmart ended handgun ammunition sales.
But the groundswell of corporate action on guns has ended, my colleague Nathaniel Meyersohn writes.
After this week's shooting at a school in Nashville, most companies have declined to say or do much of anything.
Guns are "among the hottest hot-button issues right now," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and a CNN political analyst. "In a polarized era, most companies still prefer to avoid these sorts of questions."
Even if executives sympathize with calls for gun control, he said, they don't want to get involved in an issue that could trigger a backlash among some consumers.
I mean, yeah. Alienate gun lovers? In this economy?
From a big business perspective, I think it's safe to declare the whole experiment in caring about people as much as the bottom line a circa-2020 trend that has decidedly fizzled.
That doesn't mean all businesses are heartless, of course. But most of them — all those that previously rushed to tack on hashtags and spew press releases about stakeholder capitalism — are just giving up on the notion that "doing good" matters to the bottom line.
As Nathaniel notes, banks and financial institutions that have sought to reduce ties to the firearms industry have faced pressure from Republican lawmakers. Texas passed a law in 2021 requiring banks underwriting the state's municipal bond market to certify that they don't and won't turn away firearms clients.
More than 50 House Republicans introduced a bill last year that would "fight back against 'boardroom gun control'" and prevent any businesses that receive federal funding from turning away firearm businesses.
Visa, Mastercard and Discover this month also paused a plan to implement a new merchant category code for the nation's gun retailers after receiving political pressure from Republicans. The measure was designed help flag potential mass shooters and gun traffickers. But two dozen Republican attorneys general warned the credit card companies that they should not to go ahead with their plans.
The Republican officials said that adopting a new sales code for gun stores would harm the constitutional rights of gun owners and potentially violate consumer protection and antitrust laws.
Cool, guys. Cool cool cool.
TO BE SURE...
Companies aren't here to fix the world's problems. They aren't governments or charities. But Corporate America has expressly tried to adopt social values in recent years, at least on paper.
In 2019, the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs and tries to influence policymaking, said that companies should benefit all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders. That was a departure from the once-dominant Milton Friedman philosophy that suggests companies best serve society by focusing narrowly on growing profits and rewarding shareholders.
But lately, it seems that optimism about corporations being a force for social change is falling out of fashion. Perhaps in the haze of 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and mass protests over police violence, executives thought it made sense to take a stand. Then when they realized that simply hiring a DEI staff and adding hashtags to their tweets didn't fix systemic racism or mass shootings or bans on reproductive rights, they figured it was best to keep their mouths shut and hope no one notices.
Maybe I'm wrong about this? I honestly don't know, because I'm just so sad. I'm disappointed, though hardly surprised, by the silence emanating from the halls of some of the wealthiest and most influential halls of power in a country that should do better by its people.
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