Apropos of the last few threads about school shootings and capitalism ...
A group of nuns (including the Dominicans in Adrian, Michigan, who send me updates) bought stock in a gun company and forced it to file a report on how its weapons have been used in school shootings, and what it is doing to make guns safer. They've been trying to tweak corporate consciences for the last 20 years. Read more here.
More information on the group's other activities through the Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center is here.
Ok, that is extremely cool.
ReplyDelete... and it's pretty surprising how many wrong notes this CEO manages to hit in his statement:
ReplyDelete"Ruger’s CEO was defiant. Ruger will not “adopt misguided principles by groups that do not own guns and do not understand guns,” he told The New York Times.
“This proposal requires Ruger to prepare a report,” he said. “That’s it, a report. It cannot force us to change our business, which is lawful and constitutionally protected.”"
And then there is this from the article:
"By then the nuns owned the minimum amount of stock ($2,000 worth) required to file a formal resolution. The one for Sturm Ruger called on the company to track incidents of violence involving its firearms; to reveal what it’s doing to make guns safer, including research on “smart gun” technology; and to report on the risks that gun violence poses to the company’s reputation and finances."
... note how those requests are of a piece with this passage from that dreary Holy See document I've been posting about this week:
"No profit is in fact legitimate when it falls short of the objective of the integral promotion of the human person, the universal destination of goods, and the preferential option for the poor.[19] These are three principles that imply and necessarily point to one another, with a view to the construction of a world that is more equitable and united. For this reason, progress within an economic system cannot measured only by quantitative and profit-driven standards, but also on the basis of the well-being that extends a good that is not simply material." (10)
I like the nun's metrics here! And it's extremely interesting that Blackrock, a gigantic institutional investor, seems to be on board with these measurements. The combination of social media and activism is causing corporations to take notice: they see it as being in their self-interest to avoid costs, including social costs.
Sorry, just one more comment and then I'll shut up for a while. I've seen quite a bit of chatter about boycotting financial institutions that do business with gun dealers. That is one approach, but these sisters are doing the opposite: actually buying stock in the gun manufacturers and then working to drive change "from the inside".
ReplyDeleteStockholder actions by people who own stock for social purposes, not just to get rich, have been going on since the '60s. They rarely work. Somebody must have done a study of successful cases. But just making the media, as the sisters in this case did, has its own value. Of course, Ruger still has their $2,000, and they don't have Ruger's report.
ReplyDeleteJust a personal note: I qualified with the Army weapons of my era (War of 1812 or whenever), and I have shot cans off fences with other people's pistols from time to time. But the only time I was tempted to buy one -- and I would have been able to get it at a bargain price -- it was a 9mm Ruger. Beautiful weapon. I didn't buy it, and, considering how Ruger has acted lately I am glad I didn't.
I like the imagination involved in the sisters' m.o. And making the media--and getting that company guy on the record--helps reveal the kind of thinking that goes on in these companies.
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