If an organization holds an opinion, I may not agree with it, but I can respect it so long as they're generally consistent. Catholics, for example, tend to disfavor both abortion and the death penalty. While I may or may not agree with them, the fact that it's at least consistent--they value life and oppose the taking of it in any way--is worthy of respect.

When banks started cutting off the firearm industry, we know it wasn't from some deep belief that weapons were a bad thing in general. It was in response to the goings on with regard to New York leadership taking the whole "nice bank you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it" approach to governance and the Second Amendment.

But Citigroup went down that road just the same, but it seems that it only applies to folks like you and me.

Citigroup last week urged its Wall Street staff to “keep their cool” when anti-Israel protestors blocked their New York City headquarters building. The protestors took issue with Citigroups’s alleged financial agreement to support Israel’s purchase of fighter jets from the U.S. government, according to The New York Post.

To be clear, NSSF believes Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorists. The horrific attacks on Oct. 7 demonstrated how critically important the Second Amendment is for Americans. The right to keep and bear arms doesn’t exist in Israel and it is worth noting that their restrictive laws about civilian ownership of firearms has been relaxed since the attacks.

Opposing policies?

However, the protests at Citigroup’s Manhattan headquarters exposed a duplicitous policy ideal by the corporate bank.

“We respect the right to protest, but not at the expense of our colleagues’ safety nor when others perpetuate abuse or hatred,” said Ed Skyler, Citigroup’s head of enterprise services and public affairs in a memo obtained by The New York Post. “Simply put, we do not tolerate acts of intimidation and violence, and we denounce antisemitism, Islamophobia, acts of hatred, discrimination and prejudice of any kind.”

Now, I can respect the refusal to cave to protestor demand, particularly if there is a lot of false information. Citigroup has a business to run and they aren't going to do well be caving to extremism.

However, it should also be noted that they've caved to extremism before. In that case, it was anti-gun extremsm.

When it comes to the lawful sale of firearms and firearm accessories, Citigroup holds a very different view. Despite the fact that the sale of firearms from a federally licensed retailer is lawful, sold to an adult who affirms all the questions on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Form 4473, and is approved by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), Citigroup contends that’s not enough.

In the case of law-abiding American adults exercising their Second Amendment rights by buying firearms, Citigroup caved to the gun control protestors and adopted a policy in 2018 to restrict services to firearm businesses that won’t adopt their additional restrictions.

Citigroup could just change its policies for firearm businesses. They could recognize that the pressure is off and that their attempts have done nothing but lose the company good will, but it won't.

Let's remember that many of the people demanding their capitulation here and now are the same people who demanded Citigroup foist additional restrictions on gun-related businesses in 2018. They're the exact same people. They figure they can get away with it here because they got away with it there.

Once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.

That's just as true here as it was when the phrase first was coined. 

Citigroup capitulated to the mob by demanding gun stores who do business with them enact policies that prohibit the sale of standard-capacity magazines, not sell any firearm to anyone under the age of 21, and not sell guns to anyone who hasn't undergone a background check despite that already being the law. They folded due to the pressure and now those who applied that pressure before are demanding they do it again.

Of course, the consistent decision would be to either end these requirements for mom-and-pop gun stores and other small businesses or to simply refuse to finance weapon sales to other nations. I'd prefer the former, obviously, but the latter would at least be consistent.

Citigroup, however, has no desire for consistency. They just know that financing those weapons sales makes them a ton of money and they're not going to make quite as much from firearm-related small businesses.

So yeah, I'm going to scorn them for it. I wouldn't like the other side of consistency, but I could at least respect it.

Instead, Citigroup has proven it deserves no respect from anyone.