CitiGroup is reversing course on their policy not to provide banking services to companies that sell firearms to people under 21. The policy went into effect after Parkland, but as we have pointed out before, relatively few mass public shootings are committed by those under 21. If they are going to ban age groups that commit these attacks at as high or higher rates, they would have to ban people who are 21 to 25, 26 to 30, 36 to 40, and 41 to 45 years of age. The ban on places that don’t do a background check on all purchases only affects those people in states that allow such purchases for people who have concealed handgun permits and
Citigroup is ending a seven-year-old policy that blocked its banking services for retailers that sold firearms to buyers under age 21 and those who did not pass a background check, reversing a high-profile decision made in the weeks after the 2018 Parkland school shooting.
Citi, one of the largest banks in the country, was lauded by gun safety advocates in March 2018 when it announced its policy, which included banning retailers that sold high-capacity magazines or bump stocks, like the one used by the Parkland shooter. Other Wall Street banks soon followed suit. The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, left 17 students and staff members dead.
On Tuesday, Citi reversed course, saying it would no longer have a specific firearms policy. . . .
While the original announcement by Citi was covered on March 22, 2018, Bank of America announced the same policy on April 11, 2018.
Bank of America will stop lending to manufacturers of “military-style firearms” that are sold for civilian use, a bank official revealed this week.
Anne Finucane, a vice chairman at Bank of America, announced the plans Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television, saying the bank had “intense conversations over the last few months” with its gun-manufacturer clients to let them know Bank of America would no longer finance their operations.
“We have just a handful of manufacturers. They know what our intentions are,” Finucane told Bloomberg. “It’s our intention not to finance these military-style firearms for civilian use.” . . .
