Citibank enters the fray.

If I boycott everyone who is opposed to guns, I’d be basically sitting in shadowy silence, eating my last scraps of cat food trying to conserve my last candle stump. But I’d have a mattress stuffed with cash in my cold bedroom.
These businesses aren’t phased by our imaginary boycotting.
 
Conservatives don't usually raise much of a fuss, if we stuck together like liberals do, we'd get much further in the culture wars.

Citibank, according to the report, doesn't do any business with gun makers.

I wonder how they will police this new position of theirs.
 
You’re right, the people that should be voting don’t, because most are satisfied with the life they built for themselves.
 
Citibank has the entire DoD by the short and curlies; they own the official travel credit cards which MUST be used for official travel.
 
A lot of this is just really good information operations - restating old news all at once to give the impression of a "wave" of popular opinion that is "really changing" the discussion. But nothing has changed.

The only thing different this time is some of our allies are panicking and selling us out, not that there is much different about that either.
 
Where have you been? People have been complaining about Citibank's positions on guns and the gun industry on this forum since 2000, along with calls for numerous boycotts of Citibank.

Where have I been? Not here, I just joined this forum a few weeks ago.
 
Here's the deal with (fill in the blank of the latest company boycotting xxxxx). They get enough pressure from organized cadres of people (and bots) to make a public statement they they're going to knuckle-under to (cause XXXXX). They make the news of being good citizens, and then quietly start loosening their policies in a year or two.

Citibank isn't the only game in town if you feel strongly about their actions, and for practical purposes there's nothing they do that isn't a commodity offering.

You can file a suit against them in small claims court, and they're happy to spend 10 times the $'s your asking to ensure you lose. You can write letters to them but you'll only get a form letter back on some related area. Yea, it stinks, but that's currently life in the US.
 
And if all the folks boycotting them managed to hurt them financially, your dollars would go back to them when our government decided to bail them out.
 
So the right thing to do is do nothing?

How about if we use the Citibank card only to donate or join Pro-2A groups, buy from gun shops, etc.? Pay it off each month to minimize their profit?
 
pnac said:
How about if we use the Citibank card only to donate or join Pro-2A groups, buy from gun shops, etc.? Pay it off each month to minimize their profit?
Click to expand...
You do know that they get a percentage of each and every transaction, right?
 
Yeah, that's why I said "minimize". Which is better, use their card to pay only for pro-gun use or dump the card and do nothing? They apparently don't need us anyway, which option has the most leverage for our side?

I'm open to suggestions.
 
I suspect most of these companies could care less about addressing violent crime or gun rights. What they care about is making money and they have decided that this position provides the best opportunity to do that. While many of the protestors at these recent rallies are overcome with emotion and a severe lack of facts corporations and politicians know exactly what they are doing. Remember the old saying, “never let a crisis go to waste” and this provides an opportunity for corporations and politicians to increase profits and power.
 
Yeah, that's why I said "minimize". Which is better, use their card to pay only for pro-gun use or dump the card and do nothing? They apparently don't need us anyway, which option has the most leverage for our side?

I'm open to suggestions.
Click to expand...

If you want to hurt citibank, don't use their cards at all. Every transaction you make with their cards makes them money. Every business, including the gun stores, pays them a percentage of every transaction.

They LIKE it when you pay your balance each month, that means you're low to no risk on defaulting.
 
I'm going to propose a counter-argument.

We gain little to nothing with these shows of boycotting. We risk setting up an adversarial relationship in our political discussions that becomes "us vs them" and, in the grand scheme of things, the "us" (being gun owners) is becoming a smaller group as time goes on. Maybe we are still a majority of those of voting age, perhaps others know for certain, but we will not be forever.

We have to be able to have civil political discourse AND respect the rights of others. I respect the right of these banks to do business in a manner that is within their morals as long as it does not violate the rights of others (no withholding loans based on race for instance). Choosing to not do business with gun manufacturers or sellers is within the realm of what I consider a reasonable personal decision. I don't, for instance, hate the Amish because they preach and practice non-violence.

We cannot put up our walls and make everything a fight. We cannot win by being an "island onto ourselves" in respect to those that agree with us We must portray ourselves as reasonable and respectful of the rights of others.

With that being said if you think withdrawing your business from these companies is the best course of action my above statements paint me in a corner of shrugging and acknowledging your choices are yours to make.
 
They alryknow we are going to be mad, it would be no surprise to them
If they lost a few customers and most likely have prepared for it.

The best thing we could do is elect someone that represents our take on the matter.
I’ve written letters of boycott to some companies in the past and one actually responded by saying “good, we don’t want you as a customer anyway” (paraphrased, of course). This is what we are facing.

Corporations have come a long way, most of them I can recall a time when they committed atrocities. Extreme human rights abuses, some of them still do overseas. Now they are becoming our nannies
Now politicians don’t have to worry about our rights, because corporations are more than willing to do it for them.
Social media gives us our group think. I follow news on Facebook, most of the stations just feed me anti gun stories, stories that aren’t even on there TV news stories. There’s more than just guns, but that’s where I have to stop. I’ve deleted so many innocent pages that soon turned into virtue signaling drivel. I just wanna know if there’s traffic, fire, tornado or a tsunami coming. I also wanna see cute puppy and kitten stuff, but sadly those have all gone political.
I’m not bashing all corporations, I’ve made a good living at some of them.
 
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