Mayor Rahm Emanuel is taking his gun control push to private banks and asking major lenders in Chicago to stop doing business with firearms manufacturers.
In a letter to TD Bank and Bank of America on Thursday, Mr. Emanuel asked the CEOs to force gun manufacturers they do business with to “find common ground with the vast majority of Americans who support a military weapons and ammunition ban.”
TD Bank provides $60 million in credit to Smith & Wesson; Bank of America provides a $25 million line to Sturm, Ruger & Co.
Mr. Emanuel can’t force the banks to comply, and so far, CEOs haven’t responded, the Boston Globe reports.
But the Chicago pol did just convince city officials to divest $5 billion in pension fund investments from companies that manufacture guns.
And that effort is reverberating among states. New York and California have both halted pension investments in companies that do business with the gun industry, according to various media reports.
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Cheryl Chumley is a continuous news writer for The Washington Times. Previously, she was part of the start-up team for The Washington Times’ digital aggregation product, Times247. She’s also a 2008-2009 Robert Novak journalism fellow with The Phillips Foundation. She can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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