From CNBC:
Chief executives of 145 companies urge Senate to pass gun control laws
Leaders of 145 companies wrote a letter to the Senate Thursday, urging the governmental body to take action on gun safety.
The letter notes recent gun violence in Chicago, Newport News, Virginia and other places, calling it a “public health crisis.” But the leaders also say that gun violence is preventable, and lawmakers can step in to prevent tragedies.
“That’s why we we urge the Senate to stand with the American public and take action on gun safety by passing a bill to require background checks on all gun sales and a strong Red Flag law that would allow courts to issue life-saving extreme risk protection orders,” they wrote in the letter.
Ah, yes, the Red Flag laws that we’ve documented are guaranteed to be abused by assholes out to ruin a gun owner’s life. I’ve posted two examples of abuse in as many days.
Seriously. Has anybody thought of the implications here? What happens if a person is Red Flagged for entirely vindictive reasons?
Will their employer be notified? What happens if their employer finds out and decides that having a Red Flagged person on their staff is a risk, will the employer fire them? Probably.
How will someone who gets fired for a Red Flag be able to get another job? Who would hire someone with an outstanding Red Flag? Even if that Red Flag is eventually expunged, what company would take the risk of hiring someone who had be Red Flagged?
This to me seems to be a great way to make a person destitute and unemployable for a very long time. So when I say “ruin a gun owner’s life” I mean just that.
Maybe that is a feature, not a bug.
So given all that, CEO’s of 145 companies still want to push this system onto us.
Here is the text of exactly what they want:
That s why we urge the Senate to stand with the American public and take action on gun safety by passing a bill to require background checks on all gun sales and a strong Red Flag law that would allow courts to issue life-saving extreme risk protection orders.
A universal background check law that will do nothing to prevent crime because criminals are not going to background check their dealers before they trade a stolen gun for drugs. And Red Flag laws that are rife for abuse.
Fantastic.
The list of CEO’s includes all the social media and tech CEO’s that you suspect, as well as quite a lot of financial CEO’s.
I remember when CEO’s were only interested enough in politics to hire lobbyists to give them the leg up in business. This new form of woke capitalism where CEO’s believe that because they are rich and economically powerful, they need to micromanage your lives is very quickly getting tiring.
It’s going to suck when they decide that because of my internet purchase and search history that I’m probably a gun owing Republican and they decide to nuke my cellphone, cancel my credit cards, and foreclose on my mortgage, which I have a feeling the Democrats are going to give them the power to do.
Woke capitalism fucking sucks.
Tangentially related: The “Storm Area 51” movement has, as a central theme, “They can’t stop ALL of us!”
This is the big-business capitalism version of that. “They can’t boycott ALL of us!”
The sad part is, they’re probably right….
Red flag the CEOs.
Bet they stop supporting the laws when they address on the other side.
The Department of Pre-Crime is upon us.
Going to be amazing the number of executives who find themselves red flagged.
The list of companies is rather interesting. It’s separated in “larger than 500” and “smaller than 500”. Most of the names are on the “small” list. The large list has a pile of California left wing techie companies like Uber and Twitter, assorted advertising companies, Evil Empire outfits like Bloomberg, and a bunch of “aspiring to be seen as woke” companies like Levi Strauss, Gap, etc.
I was glad (and somewhat surprised) to see my employer *not* on the list.
Uber: “our employees are not really employees, just contractors so we don’t have to pay benefits and can treat them like garbage, but we are the moral paragons on the gun issue.”
I’m currently reading about the various Chinese Dynasties repeated failures to to try and ban or regulate this or that trade good.
And the repeated failures of the Spanish Empire to regulate or ban the silver trade with China via Manila.
And should we even mention the failure of the government to ban trade in alcohol or certain drugs?
If there’s a market, someone will fill it.
Yeah, but if, say, ARs are banned, you could no longer safely take it to the range for an afternoon of plinking fun.
You might still have it, it might still be one of your most important lifesaving tools, but most of the “fun” factor will be vaporized. Not to mention the “keeping proficient” aspect.
Banning ARs, and trying to put pressure on business that cater to people with AR’s are two different issues.
One is government regulation, the other is an attempt to pressure the private market.
The second one often fails because people like to make money.
I would suspect that should this continue, a whole new financial system emerges in cooperation with the sorta-legal weed business (who’s financials tend to be fairly restricted by federal regulation).
Lol.
This is going to make the contract negotiations I have with a couple of these guys fun. And by fun, I mean I get to tell them to their faces that they’re no longer a viable candidate due to their venturing into politics that have nothing to do with their own industry.
I am in a position at ultramegacorporation where I do, in fact, have veto power over what vendors we use in some cases. Three of the vendors that I can expel are on that list, and all three are in the “we spend millions of dollars a year” range.
My industry was politically disfavored 25 years ago and can easily become politically disfavored again in the very near future. I can’t risk ongoing operations because some jackass in San Francisco might want to “apply pressure” in the future to force us down a path we don’t want to go. We’ve already started pulling out of Salesforce because they suddenly and without warning declared that any company that sells guns will no longer be able to use their software. It is terrifying that they might turn on us like that one day, so we’re dropping them.
Is my employer perfect? No. Do they support things that I do not? Yes. But as Robb Allen said (paraphrasing) “I can’t even agree with myself 100% of the time; how can I expect someone else to?”
I do what I can where I can to fight back, and this is something I can do.
You probably network with other people in a similar position/ job function. You may want to discreetly discuss this issue with others in industries that are not always favored, like Pharmaceutical, Mining, Timber, Petroleum, Defense, Energy, and the like. Even software can get political, ask Mr. Eich.
Awesome.
The argument about “can easily become disfavored again” is a very good one. It makes it clear you don’t have to be in the gun business to have a good reason to be worried about gun business boycotts.
Sorry I cannot write with the words I want to use with these 145 outlaw companies that infringe on Second Amendment and want to Red Flag innocent Americans (i.e. no Due Process).
Let’s try…they can “go forth and auto fornicate with an un-lubricated cactus.”