This week’s revelation that Salesforce.com, a San Francisco-based business software company, has changed its company policy to bar the use of its technology to companies that sell “a range of firearms, including automatic and certain semi-automatic firearms,” got a swift and scathing reaction from a major gun rights organization.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms on Thursday ripped the new policy, calling it “corporate coercion and social bigotry.”
“This is outrageous,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb in a prepared statement. “Here are companies selling perfectly legal products according to the requirements of federal law, and just because those products happen to be a certain class of firearms and accessories, the companies are essentially facing being black-balled.”
According to CNBC, a Salesforce.com spokesperson explained, “After carefully reviewing similar policies in the industry and discussing with internal and external stakeholders, we updated our policy. The change affects new customers and a small number of existing customers when their current contracts expire.”
The CNBC report noted that “other tech companies have taken similar actions.” But that evidently doesn’t make it right in the eyes of NSSF or CCRKBA.
NSSF reportedly called the practice “corporate policy virtue signaling.”
Dick’s Sporting Goods last year changed its sales policy on firearms, removing modern sporting rifles from its inventory in a high-profile move following the Valentine’s Day shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Seventeen students and adults died in that shooting, which launched a massive anti-gun-rights movement.
Backlash from the firearms community was widely reported.
But CCRKBA’S Gottlieb warned that this sort of policy “can become insidious.”
“When social justice warriors become corporate bullies, maybe it’s time for Congress to step in and provide some adult supervision,” he said. “Denying an essential service to a company because it sells some products that may be offensive to some people should be setting off alarms throughout corporate America.”
The nationally-recognized Second Amendment advocate cautioned against letting such a policy be established because it can spread.
“What’s to prevent this or another company from deciding sometime in the future to essentially blacklist another product it doesn’t like,” Gottlieb questioned. “Suddenly, we’re not talking about an affront to the Second Amendment and millions of law-abiding firearms owners, we’re talking about possible restraint of trade.”
This comes coincidentally with statements from Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr that support more gun control efforts. According to Fox News, Kerr thinks young voters will push for changes in gun policy. He contended that the country doesn’t have “sensible gun laws.”
Whether such outspokenness will have an impact on Warriors ticket sales or fan support remains to be seen. The late Paul Allen, owner of the Seattle Seahawks, was a big money supporter of gun control efforts in Washington State, but whether that resulted in loss of fan support hasn’t been determined.
