BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today announced it is updating its list of businesses and CEOs who push for increased gun control and prohibition, adding Kenneth Cole, Northwell Health and Mesirow to the roster.
CCRKBA’s “Don’t Feed the Gun Prohibitionists” project began last year with the creation of a dynamic list of businesses and CEOs who have been supporting new legislation designed to impair the rights of law-abiding firearms owners, said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. The current roster lists some 200 businesses and their CEOs.
“When we started this project,” Gottlieb said, “we were sometimes surprised, and in some cases disappointed, at some of the businesses we placed on the list. We discovered several brand name businesses and corporate leaders who evidently have a quiet agenda to limit gun rights. The listing is our way of letting current and potential patrons have the knowledge about what their hard earned dollars may actually be funding.”
Kenneth Cole is a global fashion brand, while Northwell Health is a health care conglomerate and the largest health care provider in the state of New York. Mesirow is a Chicago-based financial firm which supports the Giffords gun control lobbying group.
“We’re not calling for a boycott of these companies,” Gottlieb explained. “Businesses and the people who own them can support whatever kind of philosophy they want, and gun owning consumers can likewise not spend any money with those firms. Let the marketplace decide. Over 100 million American gun owners represent a sizeable consumer bloc, and they will decide on their own where to spend their money.”
Gottlieb said a free market dictates the right of consumers to know about the products they purchase, and that includes knowing whether a business they support may be working in the shadows to erode their constitutional rights.
“We encourage people buy products from companies they can count on to not support efforts aimed at curtailing constitutional rights,” he explained. “By providing this information, we hope gun owning consumers are making reasonable decisions about which businesses to patronize. This might convince some businesses to re-think their core values.”