A growing number of US
companies are distancing themselves from the National Rifle Association
in the wake of the latest school massacre in Florida.
Petitions are circulating online
targeting companies that offer discounts to NRA members on its website.
#BoycottNRA was the second most trending topic on Twitter.
Members of the gun lobby have access
to special offers from partner companies on its website, ranging from
life insurance to wine clubs.
For a second consecutive day companies
listed on the site have cut ties to the NRA as it aggressively resists
calls for stricter gun control in the wake of the mass shooting at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17
dead.
The rental car company Hertz tweeted
on Friday that it has notified the NRA that it is ending the lobby's
discount program with Hertz.
The insurance company MetLife Inc.
also discontinued its discount program with the NRA on Friday. The
software company Symantec Corp., which makes Norton Antivirus
technology, did the same.
Insurer Chubb Ltd. said Friday it is
ending participation in the NRA's gun-owner Carry Guard insurance
program, but it provided notice three months ago. The program that
provided coverage for people involved in gun-related incidents or
accidents had been under scrutiny by regulators over marketing issues.
Those defections arrived a day after
the car rental company Enterprise Holdings, which also owns Alamo and
National, said it was cutting off discounts for NRA members. First
National Bank of Omaha, one of the nation's largest privately held
banks, announced that it would not renew a co-branded Visa credit-card
with the NRA.
Nearly two dozen corporations
nationwide offer incentives to NRA members, according to
ThinkProgress.com, a news site owned by the Center for American Progress
Action Fund.
Amazon.com Inc and other online
streaming platforms are also facing demands to drop the online video
channel NRATV, featuring programming produced by the group.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in
America, founded after 20 first-graders were shot and killed at a school
in Connecticut in December 2012, sent letters to Apple Inc, AT&T
Inc , Amazon, Alphabet Inc's Google and Roku Inc on Friday, asking them
to drop NRATV from their products. None of the companies immediately
responded to requests for comment on the letters.
'We have been just disgusted by NRATV
since its beginning,' Shannon Watts, founder of the Moms Demand Action
group, told Reuters. 'It really propagates dangerous misinformation and
inflammatory rhetoric. It tries to pit Americans against one another,
all in an attempt to further their agenda of selling guns.'
David Hogg, one of the outspoken
student survivors of last week's attack who launched the #NeverAgain
anti-gun violence movement, said the students would target any company
with ties to the NRA, in addition to lawmakers who accept donations.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne
LaPierre said in a blistering speech delivered on Thursday at the
Conservative Political Action Conference that those advocating for
stricter gun control are exploiting the Florida shooting which killed 17
people, mostly high-school students.
'Evil walks among us and God help us
if we don't harden our schools and protect our kids,' LaPierre said.
'The whole idea from some of our opponents that armed security makes us
less safe is completely ridiculous.'
President Donald Trump has aligned
himself with the NRA, suggesting some teachers could be armed so that
they could fire on any attacker.
American corporations are moving in the other direction.
On Friday, a large Wall Street money
management firm said that it wanted to engage with major weapons
manufacturers about what comes next.
Blackrock Inc., which manages
$6trillion in assets, has become one of the largest stakeholders gun
manufacturers like Sturm Ruger & Co., American Outdoor Brands Corp.
and Vista Outdoor Inc. through indirect investments.
The money is placed in index funds, so
Blackrock cannot sell shares of individual companies within the index.
Its fund clients invest in indexes that might contain companies like
Ruger.
On Friday, spokesman Ed Sweeney said
Blackrock will be 'engaging with weapons manufacturers and distributors
to understand their response to recent events.'
Blackrock, through indirect
investments, holds a 16.18 percent stake in Sturm Ruger, an 11.91 per
cent stake in Vista, and a 10.5 percent stake in American Outdoor,
according to the data firm Factset.
Shares of gun companies mostly fell in trading Friday.
AP/Mailonline
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