After years of trying and failing to push new laws
through Congress, gun control advocates are targeting American firearms makers
from a different angle, according to NPR..
"The only thing they really understand is
money," says Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of the nonprofit New
Yorkers Against Gun Violence. She's also part of a coalition called the
Campaign to Unload, which encourages investors large and small to divest from
owning stock in companies that make guns and ammunition.
"You may not even know that your 401(k) has gun
stocks in it," Barrett says. "So asking the question is very, very
important. Not only for individuals, but for public pension funds...it's really
raising the issue and making gun stocks toxic."
Gun control advocates have been pushing for years to
get investors to divest from companies that make firearms and ammunition. Now
officials in New York City want to widen that push to include retailers. But
not everyone thinks their divestment campaign will succeed.
"If it's made to be punitive, it's not going to
work," says Andrea James, a firearms industry analyst with Dougherty & Company. She says gun stocks have performed well because gun sales have been
brisk.
"When the divestment happens," James says,
"I don't think it really affects the underlying business, meaning the
number of firearms they sell."
The divestment camp has claimed some victories after
mass shootings in Connecticut and California. Big institutional investors like
the California
State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) and pension funds in New
York and Philadelphia have dropped their holdings in gun companies.
But the stock price of those gun companies has not
gone down. In fact, since the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012, the stock prices of
Sturm, Ruger & Co. and Smith & Wesson have mostly gone up, even as big
institutional investors have moved to sell.
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