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Americans have grown used to corporate executives treading the well-worn paths of the Northeast corridor to convene alongside elected officials in Washington, DC, and discuss geopolitics, policy and all that’s in-between.
In 2017, major CEOs from across the country came together to oppose North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law. In 2019, they called abortion bans “bad for business.”
After the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, many of corporate America’s biggest names denounced the rioters and pledged to halt their political giving.
Recently, more than 1,000 companies promised to voluntarily curtail their operations in Russia in protest of Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling semi-automatic, assault-style rifles at stores and Citigroup put new restrictions on gun sales by business customers after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
A year later, after mass shootings at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and a nightclub in Dayton, Ohio, Walmart ended handgun ammunition sales.
Corporate leadership has long been vocal on the issue of gun control – in 2019 and again this past summer nearly 150 major companies – including Lululemon, Lyft, Bain Capital, Bloomberg LP, Permanente Medical Group and Unilever – called gun violence a “public health crisis” and demanded that the US Senate pass legislation to address it.
That’s why corporate America’s silence in the wake of the latest mass shooting at a school in Nashville is so jarring. The United States has come to rely on the increasing…
