Citibank has announced a new “U.S. Commercial Firearms Policy” a move it descries as a direct response to recent gun violence. At the same time, Citibank claims this new policy is “not centered on an ideological mission to rid the world of firearms.” The measures that Citibank is instituting are no doubt poll-tested and seemingly minor, but they also undoubtedly represent an ideological mission on behalf of Citibank:
The new policy ignores that gun violence on the whole has been dropping precipitously in recent decades—gun homicides have declined by almost 50 percent since 1993. This happened even as the assault weapons ban= expired and gun laws have become more liberal generally. There’s no evidence or compelling reason to think that any of these measures Citbank is endorsing would have any notable impact on gun violence if they were universally adopted.
Individual acts of gun violence, such as the recent Parkland school shooting, are horrifying and we should do whatever responsible things we can to curb them. But what Citibank is doing here portends a very disturbing direction for corporate influence in the lives of Americans.
First off, Citigroup should consider cleaning up its own messes before engaging in any virtue signaling. If the compnay was truly concerned about gun violence, it would not have ignored 18,000 internal alerts related to possibly laundering of more than $1 billion in Mexican drug cartel money. In May 2017, Citibank paid a $97.4 million settlement to the Justice Department related to the money laundering. A few months later, it paid $130 million to settle a lawsuit related to rigging the Libor benchmark interest rate.]That’s just from last year. The list of Citibank misdeeds is much longer.
Ultimately, Citibank’s specific demands of gun sellers are less worrisome than what they portend. Citibank targeted those who sell firearms because this is a priority of the political left. The left dominates the leadership of all or America’s important institutions: media, bureaucracies, academia, unions, Silicon Valley, and corporate America more broadly. For decades there has been a move to push right-of-center and religious America out of the public square. Corporations like Starbucks and Target tout their progressive bona fides and policies. And just in the last week, Facebook seems bound and determined to make sure that Republican presidential candidates can’t use its platform to mobilize voters, even though the social media giant was happy to let the Obama campaign brag about how it used the platform to compile alarmingly detailed voter profiles on tens of millions of Americans.
But it’s a whole different level of influence if backs start limiting access to commerce based on political priorities. There is tremendous power in controlling the flood of money.
Now, I fear a Rubicon has been crossed. Insisting on small gun restrictions are a step down the slippery slope. How long before banks refuse to do business with Christians who don’t bake gay weddings? Businesses that don’t pay for their employees’ birth control? Crisis pregnancy centers? Gyms that insist on locker rooms being of binary gender?
