Tag: gun safety

As issues of corporate social responsibility continue to gain ground, will the issue of gun safety become more prominent this proxy season?

A lot has been written about institutional investors’ turn toward issues of corporate social responsibility.  One CSR topic that has received a lot of attention in the last few years has been firearms safety. In this post, published last week on The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, a coalition of investors, including CalPERS, CalSTRS, Rockefeller Asset management and State Street Global Advisors, has developed The Responsible Civilian Firearms Industry Principles, intended to encourage companies involved in the manufacture, distribution, sale and enforcement of regulation of the firearms industry to take action in support of the responsible use of firearms. According to the post, in asserting its “role as investors,” the group identifies “expectations for the firearms industry that will reduce risks and improve the safety of civil society at large. Further, we commit to monitoring progress by companies over time and engaging with them regularly on this issue, especially in support of enterprises that champion adoption of responsible practices….We call on companies within the civilian firearms industry to publicly demonstrate and publish their compliance with each of these principles, failing which, we will consider using all tools available to us as investors to mitigate these risks.”