On Guns, It's Clear Companies Will Be Made To Care

Earlier this week, a letter was made public calling on Warner Brothers to support gun control. The reason? Because they made a movie about a comic book villain that a mass killer dressed up as.

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However, this wasn’t as shocking as it probably should have been.

For a while now, battle lines have been being drawn in this country. The fighting isn’t literal, or not yet, anyway. However, there is a war being waged, and it’s for the hearts and minds of corporate America.

Once upon a time, companies were careful not to take a political stance unless they were somehow being impacted. This was smart business. After all, you could easily lose customers by alienating them if you take positions different from them. While most people still associated with folks holding different political views at the time, companies were sensitive to maintaining the perception of neutrality.

This was a good thing as it allowed the discussion of important issues to not be muddied by corporate CEOs offering their opinions, opinions with not only might anger customers but which may also vary wildly from their stockholders or employees.

Yet the Warner Brothers letter isn’t even the first letter this month involving guns and corporations. Earlier this month, dozens of CEOs signed a letter calling for gun control. This followed companies like Walmart and Kroger asking people to no longer openly carry firearms in their stores.

Some companies no longer care what you think. They’re going to tell you what to think.

Warner Brothers, however, wasn’t one of those companies apparently, and that’s the problem.

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Gun rights supporters are apparently unable to stand the idea of someone not agreeing with them so completely that they’ll willingly risk alienating their customer base. Warner Brothers was essentially told what to include in their films from now on; and told that by people with no real understanding of the film industry.

Companies will be made to care about gun control.

To make matters worse, it’s almost impossible to boycott every company that has an anti-gun stance since half the time, we don’t even know which brands are owned by who. As a result, outcry at Levi Strauss doesn’t necessarily impact the sale of Dockers and people vowing to cut off Nike still buy Converse.

In other words, it’s entirely possible for them to anger half of the American people to the point of boycott and still not actually feel the pinch. Yet many fear the bad publicity for not holding an anti-gun position.

Add in the fact that some, such as the financial industry, face regulatory threats from states that have decided gun control is a good idea everywhere and will pressure companies headquartered in their state to do something about it. They’ll force the financial industry to care and to choke off a lawful industry just because the governor doesn’t like it.

This is troubling. Not just the antics of New York’s governor, but all of it.

What’s actually taking place is that lines are being drawn around which businesses will stay either pro-gun or neutral and around those that are taking an anti-gun stance. This will work to further divide our nation as not only are we not talking on social media anymore but now aren’t even shopping in the same stores or eating in the same restaurants.

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For anti-gunners, though, that’s the feature and not a bug.

Once again, the goal is to stigmatize gun owners and gun supporters. They want to denormalize guns to such an extreme that no one would dare talk about guns and gun rights. At that point, no minds can be changed and nothing will stop them from wiping the Second Amendment from the history books.

Well, nothing except those who won’t be made to care about something antithetical to their being, anyway. Those who will support film companies to make whatever movies they want and not bow down to the dictates of people waving the flag of victimhood hither and yon, those who would stand with companies that support our Second Amendment rights.

But America is becoming more divided, and I fear that we’ll need that Second Amendment soon enough. I don’t think some people will ever be content with just companies being made to care.

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