virtue signaling

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Anti-Rights CEOs

June 11, 2022 by 2 Comments

My good friend Liston Matthews just put out a post about anti-rights CEOs. It seems a number of corporate CEOs thought it was a great idea to engage in virtue signaling post-Buffalo and post-Uvalde.

Here is a list of CEO’s who are gun banners. Not surprisingly, it includes the CEO’s of Dick’s Sporting Goods and Levi’s. Most of these I am unfamiliar with. 

Why is it that people can’t understand that we have a criminal violence problem? IF they were able to ban production from today forward, there is something on the order of half a billion firearms extant in the United States. Those won’t go away. 

And, btw, how well has their drug ban worked?

And, btw, how well did their alcohol ban work?

As I noted about Wild Turkey bourbon and rye, I have made the choice not to purchase their product so long as Matthew McConaughey is their Creative Director. So it is with the products put out by the companies of these CEOs. I do certainly recognize that often we do have a choice about using their product. The companies for which we labor have made that choice and we have to reluctantly go along with it. However, where you do have a choice, I would say there are usually many other viable options in the market.

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A Great Response To Corporate Virtue Signaling

August 28, 2019 by 1 Comment

Jim Shepherd of the Outdoor Wires posted an editorial today concerning corporate virtue signaling. The grist for his editorial was something that took place at the most recent meeting of the Business Roundtable. At that event, a number of mega-corporation CEOs signed a document pledging to shift corporate governance away from shareholder value.

Yep, they decided that being virtuous would be more important (to them) than the long-accepted dictum that the goal of a company is to make money for its owners. Granted, the document they signed was described as “high level and low on specifics” it is most assuredly indicative of the current social and business environment.


Not presuming to think along the high-minded ridges of such industry leaders, I’ve never known a company to suddenly decide business-as-usual was no longer acceptable. Honestly, this kind of talk seldom passes my personal “smell test”. It’s my experience that when someone who makes millions of dollars annually starts telling me what’s best for the rest of us, I start sniffing. Especially when I start hearing a mix of solid thinking interspersed with comments about “what type of society is possible.”

I agree with Jim on this. We have started to see high technology companies in the social media realm decide that advertising and posts of a conservative bent must be censored or rejected. We have seen certain large banks try to tell firearms manufacturers how to run their legitimate businesses. The list goes on.

I have always been something of a contrarian. Thus, it was refreshing to see a company that hasn’t bought on to the “guns are evil” mantra. Jim points out that a company called Defenseshield Inc. that has gone the opposite way.

Not everyone, fortunately, is cut from that same bland cloth. Yesterday, I was forwarded a release from Defenseshield, Inc., a “preeminent designer, manufacturer, and seller of armor systems to the US Military, Federal agencies, the nuclear industry, airports and courthouses.”
Their CEO, Collins White, irritated at the latest rounds of “virtue signaling” in corporate America, announced some “pro-constitutional measures for all Defenseshield employees:”


1. Every day is “Bring a gun to work” day.
2. 1-year membership in the NRA.
3. Lifetime membership to Gun Owners of America.
4. Free FFL firearms transfers.
5. Pay for firearms training.
6. Pay for any permits that allow you to own or carry a firearm.
7. Pay entry fees to any firearms competition
8. Pay entry fees to any gun show
9. Match contributions to NRA, GOA, USA (Olympic) Shooting, 4H shooting, Scouting shooting programs.
10. $100 annual match toward firearms range or club membership.
11. $20 for every pair of jeans you buy that aren’t Levi’s.


“The attack on the Constitution by elite left-wing billionaires cannot be tolerated,” White said, “I left New York when the so-called safe act made many of my guns, accessories and magazines illegal. I’ve relocated to Florida where the environment for business and the freedoms granted by the constitution is not under such a rabid assault. I invite all corporate leaders to stand with me in upholding the constitution, and to invest in the future of America.”

Collins White is my kind of CEO. While I am not in their customer base and have little need for their product, if I was I’d be looking to them to fulfill it.

I only wish more CEOs and more companies were like Mr. White of Defenseshield. If you would like to let them know you appreciate their standing up for what is right, you can contact them at  info[@]defenshield.com

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NSSF Comment On New YouTube Policy

March 22, 2018 by

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has weighed in on YouTube’s new policy regarding firearms-related videos. NSSF also notes that they themselves have over 500 videos uploaded to YouTube.

The NSSF statement:

YOUTUBE’S NEW POLICY PROVIDES CAUSE FOR CONCERN

YouTube’s announcement this week of a new firearms content policy is troubling. We suspect it will be interpreted to block much more content than the stated goal of firearms and certain accessory sales. Especially worrisome is the potential for blocking educational content that serves an instructional and skill-building purpose. YouTube’s policy announcement has also served to invite political activists to flood their review staff with complaints about any video to which they may proffer manufactured outrage.

Much like Facebook, YouTube now acts as a virtual public square. The exercise of what amounts to censorship, then, can legitimately be viewed as the stifling of commercial free speech, which has constitutional protection. Such actions also impinge on the Second Amendment.

Facebook Precedent

In what we see as a parallel situation, Facebook has repeatedly shut down the pages of legitimate and reputable firearms retailers that were following Facebook’s own rules. The interpretation depended on the reviewers, the vast majority of whom have little familiarity with our business practices, let alone our products, and many of whom do not even do their work from American soil.

Both First and Second Amendment rights are essential to the liberty we enjoy as American citizens. In a very real sense, the de facto curtailment of First Amendment right of its firearm related business users, YouTube is edging toward simultaneously infringing upon the Second Amendment rights of the customers of these affected businesses.

Commerce in Firearms is Essential

As Circuit Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote in his 36-page opinion, “Our forefathers recognized that the prohibition of commerce in firearms worked to undermine the right to keep and bear arms.”

This argument can be logically extended to social media platforms. It is time that social media platform management realizes its broader collective responsibility since it commands so much of today’s virtual public square. Suppressing the expression of First Amendment protected political speech and of commercial speech is wrong, even if they think they are acting in the public interest. The resulting impingement of lawful commerce in firearms that brings with it the infringement of Second Amendment rights is equally wrong and it should stop.

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#MeToo Is So Yesterday In Pantheon Of Hollywood Virtue Signaling

March 4, 2018 by 3 Comments

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When it comes to virtue signaling no one does it better than the Hollywood stars. Unfortunately for women who have been sexually assaulted, Hollywood has the attention span of a gnat. In other words, what was hip at the Golden Globes is now passe’ and they have moved on to a new virtue signaling cause.

The new, hip virtue signal at tonight’s Oscars will be an orange pin from Everytown Mommies for Illegal Mayors.

According to the Hollywood Reporter:

Michael Bloomberg’s New York-based gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety has created an anti-gun-violence pin for celebrities to wear to the Oscars on Sunday, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

Since the Parkland, Florida, high school massacre that left 17 dead last month, thousands of young people have called upon the organization to support their efforts to advocate for more stringent gun-control laws and other public-safety issues.

According to one Hollywood stylist, the pins have been sent to The Wall Group and other key Hollywood agencies to dole out prior to the red carpet.

The pins will likely display #NeverAgain, the rallying slogan for the movement. Everytown for Gun Safety has not yet responded to THR’s request for confirmation.

So while the stars continue to make movies with gratuitous violence – much of it with firearms – they will continue to virtue signal that they are against “gun violence” (sic).

It should also be noted, as Variety reports, that they will be protected by over 500 armed LAPD officers. As usual, Hollywood is not self-aware enough to recognize the hypocrisy in all of this.

UPDATE: My friend Brandon Combs of the Firearms Policy Coalition sent me a couple of links regarding the hypocrisy of Hollywood and California politicians.