Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (courtesy cdn2-b.examiner.com)

You’d think Rahm Emanuel would have got the memo (STFU) after critics took the Chicago Mayor to task for demanding that Bank of America and TD bank divest their holdings in Smith & Wesson and Ruger. You’d think the introduction of a carry bill that will finally restore Illinois’ citizens’ Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms (including those living in his fiefdom) would inspire him to kick back for a bit. Nope. Yesterday, Hizzoner called for mutual funds to “divest and blacklist any gun manufacturers that oppose commonsense gun reforms.” At the risk of seeming indelicate, who does this jumped-up little prick think he is? Certainly not a public servant; it’s not the job of a politician to tell banks and mutual funds how to invest their money to satisfy his unconstitutional agenda. It reminds of the lyric, “for you girl, there’s just not enough love in the world.” Read the full press release after the jump . . .

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he is asking several mutual funds to divest and blacklist any gun manufacturers that oppose commonsense gun reforms. The Mayor’s letters sent to the mutual funds today come on the heels of his request last week to commercial banks asking them to stop providing financial services to gun companies that stand in the way of reform.

“Just like the banks and pension funds, I believe that these Mutual Funds can exert an enormous amount of influence by taking a stand against gun manufacturers that continue to refuse to support commonsense reforms like required background checks and an assault weapons ban. The time is now for everyone to do anything they can to stop these military-style guns and magazines from ending up on the street and putting families, children and police officers at risk,” said Mayor Emanuel. “This has to be about doing what is morally right and not what is financially beneficial to their bottom lines.”

Mayor Emanuel is sending a letter today to the chief executives of Allianz, BlackRock, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Vanguard, James Investment Research and Capital World Investments.  All of the funds own stock of gun manufacturers who are actively lobbying against safety reforms. The mayor is asking the mutual funds to divest from these companies until they support these reforms.

The Mayor’s latest request complements other actions he has recently taken, including encouraging city leaders from the across country to divest from companies that manufacture or sell assault weapons.  Mayor Emanuel has also introduced an ordinance to strengthen Chicago’s gun laws and is supporting state and federal safety legislation.

Earlier this month, Mayor Emanuel ordered a portfolio analysis from the five pension and retirement funds for Chicago employees to determine if fund managers hold underlying debt or equity positions in companies that manufacture or sell assault weapons as the first step towards removing these companies from the investment plans. This week, the Chicago Municipal Employees Annuity and Benefit Fund (MEABF) board voted to divest more than $1 million from three companies that manufacture assault weapons – Freedom Group, Smith and Wesson and Sturm Ruger. Other cities, including Los Angeles and Philadelphia have followed suit.

The Mayor called on Chicago’s sister agencies – the Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago Housing Authority, Chicago Park District – to conduct the same review.  The Chicago Teachers Pension Fund (CTPF), which has $9.5 billion in assets, already voted to divest its investments with gun manufacturing companies.

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89 COMMENTS

  3. Great, this will artificially reduce stock prices and make them an excellent purchase opportunity for freedom-minded investors.

    • This is a perfect time to Taurus to come in and pick up some killer investments. In turn this will cement them as a premier manufacturer within the US.

  4. the reason he is doing this is because he just can’t come to terms that his own “hood” is a fu&kin war zone and he can’t get a handle on it (till they kill them selfs off that is) his self ego will not allow it so spread the virus and calling him jumped up little prick…are we sure he has one he’s acting more like the female body part than anything else…LOL

    • On the news tonight, he is back blaming other states and outstate Illinois for the gun problem in Chicago!

  6. So…someone whose sole job is to get a return on investment is supposed to drop stocks from one of the only growth industries? If any do this, back far away, they are not doing the right thing with your money.

  7. Even within his gun-prohibitionist view of the world, what he is doing makes no sense.

    Gun manufacturers make arms for the law enforcement and military too, i.e. those groups he deems “suitable” to have them.

  8. It would be interesting to see firearm manufacturers divest in the Chicago police department…quit selling firearms to them.

    • You beat me to it !! All firearms/ammunition manufacturers just stop selling guns AND ammo to those municipalities who divest in their companies. NO semi or full auto weapons to bloomberg or emanuel for use by their security teams. See how long it takes for them to change their tune.

      • We’ll they’d buy them from Israel! After we give them to Israel, that is, with our tax dollars.

        • Easy for you guys to call a boycott. Not your money coming out of the gun maker’s pockets. Little gun boycotter girls are worse than environmentalists with their carefully constructed little boycott lists.

    • No new guns, parts, ammo or accessories. American companies need to refuse to do business with these crooked skunks, all of them! I wouldn’t cry one bit to see them having to arm their police with Russian milsurp. Thats about the only thing that has not dried up is Mosin-Nagant rifles and spam cans of 7.62x54r.

      Oh, and don’t forget to clean em after practice Officers, that stuff is corrosive!

      • It would be a great plan but it would never work. All it would take is 1 company that sides with the government and has the same beliefs as them. HK is one of those companies. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be about having the same beliefs, money trumps everything.

  9. Perhaps it’s time for the NRA to start their own bank catering to NRA members and gun manufacturers only.

    • +1

      This seems to me to be a collosal abuse of power, racketeering perhaps? I know the current administration won’t investigate/prosecute this but, shouldn’t he worry about the next administration?

      Time for hardball? Gun & ammo manufacturers should consider blockading Chicago, no more guns, ammo, parts, etc. to the city until Rahm ceases his attack on their business. (I see this has been mentioned above.)

    • This is how the Progressives roll. This is a daily occurrence in Washington D.C. We just don’t hear or care about most of the threats. How else did Obamacare get passed? Whole lot of waking up needs to be going on in this country.

  11. How is this NOT interfering with interstate commerce? He & Barry really do believe they are Kings. No surprise though, its in the drinking water.

  13. RF, that pic looks like a little like man lovin’ goin on. Maybe King Obama told him to do while they were in this romantic hug?

  14. “gun manufacturers that oppose commonsense gun reforms.”

    oppose commonsense gun reforms

    commonsense

    where did this word come from all of a sudden?

  15. If only the White House walls could speak. America has gone from Bill and Monica to Barack and Rahm.

  16. Commando Rahmbo DOES NOT SHUT UP FOR ANYONE.

    Commando Rahmbo only shuts up when someone SHUTS HIS FILTHY TRAP FOR HIM.

  18. I connected 60+ times at O’Hare May 2011 to September 2012. Since September I’m connecting in Minneapolis at no real difference in price and maybe 30 more minutes to my destinations on average. Usually ate an overpriced meal at O’Hare and tipped well.

    Cancelled plans to take the wife there for a few days of shopping and museum-ing. The less I spend in that tin pot dictator’s fiefdom the better. I’m not likely to boycott companies that cave to that stupid, stupid little man but will boycott Chicago.

    • We should have a PSA message saying how dangerous Chicago is and ask everyone to boycott it until the mayor does his job or is replaced

  19. In the same light, considering how many innocent people are killed by drunk drivers, perhaps those same funds should stop supporting the manufacturers of alcoholic bevrages.

  20. The press release didn’t say anything about donating the “blood-money” from the profits made from these unholy companies to victims of gun violence. Interesting. Obviously he can’t put ALL his (everyone else’s) money where his mouth is.

  21. Quote: “…who does this jumped-up little prick think he is?”

    You give him way too much credit, RF

    More like: “jumped-up little ballerina queen”!

  22. A month ago i was a little worried about all these politicians talking crazy. Now its just scary the level of blatant disregard for our rights as Americans. I know law suits are coming, letter writing is being done and phone calls are made but at what point is enough enough? This is getting out of hand, what do we do about this?

  23. This was like them talking on the news saying Chick Fila out of their cities because the president donates his money to anti-gay causes.

    You don’t get to tell businesses how to do their legal business Rahm. Jeebus H. Christ these folks act as intolerant and douchey as they accuse the GOP as being.

  24. Rham thinks he is King, one day he wants to run for President so he can be “God”.

    Maybe if Rham spent more time looking for a new Chief of Police and less time writing letters Chicago wouldn’t have the highest Homicide total for January in more than 10 years. At this rate Chicago could hit 600-700 homicides this year if things keep up.

  25. So, not only does Mr. Emanuel not understand guns, he clearly doesn’t understand finances either. I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible. If the holdings in the gun manufacturing companies are common stock, then who owns the stock and how much they paid for it has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the bottom line of the company. To put it simply, the price of the stock is a reflection of the projected net earnings of the company. Buying stock in Ruger does not help Ruger’s bottom line. Now, if he framed the argument that he didn’t want anyone profiting from the profits of these companies (i.e. selling high), then that might make more sense. What he doesn’t understand, though, is that unless the company is relying on huge amounts of bonds and other debt securities, your divestment doesn’t do a darn thing to impact them. Even if your investment in one of those companies is bond heavy, it doesn’t matter to the company if you do sell because the bond has already been issued and they will continue to pay the interest and will settle the bond upon its maturation. The only way investors could put pressure on the company would be in refusing to buy bonds and other debt securities from them and that is only if they need to issue bonds to raise capital to begin with. Does Mr. Emanuel really not understand that when you buy stock in a company on the open exchange and not as part of a public offering, that the company doesn’t get the money? The reality is, Mr. Emanuel should understand that the greatest influence that investors could have on the company is by voting and changing the leadership of the company.

    So, I say let all the pro-gun control crowd get out of their investments in these companies. That is less votes that could sway the focus of the company.

    • Excellent, and no Emanuel has no clue. According to Wikipedia “Emanuel was encouraged by his mother to take ballet lessons as a boy and is a graduate of the Evanston School of Ballet,”

      Besides ballet and speech writing, those are his two skills. He knows nothing about finances and nothing about running a city. Today he announced that he is moving 200 former desk jockey cops and asking them to work in the heavy gang populated areas of the city. How well do you think that will work out given the police have said many of these guys have no experience working in gang areas and many have not been on the streets in years!

  26. It’s amazing reading the behavior of the people that were elected and supposedly are servants of the people. Clearly I don’t recall any of them in their campaigning speeches that they were hell bent on subverting the rights of those same people.

    If you didn’t believe in the 2A vs tyranny before, and couldn’t imagine your gov’t becoming that way, I think it’s pretty clear that King Obama and Princes’ Rahm and Cuomo are making it pretty obvious what their plan is. Seems like the AR-15 and Surefire flashlight are destined to become the modern day pitchfork and torch. F’ Obama and the horse he rode in on.

  28. I think it would be interesting to have someone sue for breach of fiduciary duty. After all, the trustees of the funds have a legal responsibility under the documents organizing the fund to invest for the benefit of the members. Eliminating an entire class of assets without notifying the members and thus artificially reducing their ability to maximize return could be a problem.
    Granted, most funds creep back into firearms stocks next quarter after the storm subsides, since they are, by and large, profitable investments.

  29. I’m glad rahm is in the National Bureau of Standards for “common sense”. Common sense just does not seem to dictate to old rahm that this Chicago thing, really isn’t working. I didn’t think anyone could hop up & down on his tongue, Imagine my surprise, Randy

  30. It’s a shame we can’t get everyone to stop buying Chicago bonds. See if the city can run without borrowing money.

  31. Ok let me get this straight..
    You are asking financial institutions to do the following.
    Drop, divest, tell FOAD, to the best financial investments in the history of the US?
    Mec-Gar can’t even keep stock and I am sure they are working round the clock.
    Franklin Armory, Colt, Remington, Ruger, etc etc, all of these companies have dumped the volume purchasing discounts, probably, and are running production as fast as their forgeries and CNC milling stations can go, and you are asking them to walk away?? Their back orders are piling up like letters to Santa at the USPS in November, and you want them to dump their stocks?

    That is some special kind of stupid right there Mr. Emanuel..

  32. Wait! The customers being serviced buy these mutual funds are not the gun companies, it’s the investors in the mutual fund.
    He is asking an investment company to punish the investing public in order to pressure the gun industry. That not only doesn’t make sense, it demonstrates a lack of economic understanding and criminal tampering with the market.

    How is this guy not in jail, let alone in office?

  33. Meanwhile, Illinois has the lowest bond rating of any state in the union after being downgraded this week, and Chicago’s bond rating was downgraded in 2010.

    If funds are going to boycott anything, it ought to be Chicago’s and Illinois’ debt instruments.

    • They will be divested not out of making a statement, but because well their economy sucks!
      While they won’t dump bonds already purchased, new bonds will be a hard sell for them.

  34. Scariest line ever uttered by a politician:

    “We’re going to use the power of government to make them change their ways,” De Blasio said.

  35. Gun owners can hurt this miserable little thug and his buddy in New York, that other midget, Michael Bloomberg. Boycott companies that run out of these crap pots – Chicago is home to Sears, K-Mart, Motorola, Wrigley’s, United Airlines and many more. Pick these companies out, list them, and then use your dollars to support businesses that run out of less anti gun cities. That’s the ONLY way these crooks will be silenced. Voting with your dollars is as important as voting in elections.

      • True. And Airbus planes are made in European countries with severe gun control, so those are off the list, too.

        • Airbus is off my list because it’s planes are excrutiatingly uncomfortable. The seat cushions feel like they’re made of wood.

        • Airbus planes are made in countries with “severe gun control?” News to me – neither France nor Germany has any waiting time for any gun that you may want to buy. Ill-Annoy has this, and, in Chicago, you couldn;t even own a gun unless you were an alderman or a police officer until the Supreme Court gave the state firm instructions on what it could do and what it couldn’t. The Europeans do have requirements for demonstrating a minimum level of marksmanship – I could live with that. You can also join full auto clubs in several countries if you qualify. I’m not saying that I would live there, but it would take a monumental act of ignorance to class all of Europe with Britain and its ridiculous gun ownership restrictions.

  38. Mayor Emanuel. “This has to be about doing what is morally right and not what is financially beneficial to their bottom lines.”

    Doesn’t Mayor Emanuel mean: “This has to be about doing what is morally right and not what is going to be the most politically beneficial to his future?”

  39. BOYCOTT CHICAGO!
    I’ve already written the mayors office to inform him that my friends and I have cancelled our annual get away to Chicago (which we’ve done for the last 11 years) to protest his anti 2nd Amendment stance. And although it’s not substantial, I will no longer conduct any business deals with the city either. Thankfully I can make up the difference elsewhere.

    Chicago is the next Detroit, going straight to hell.

  41. Time to hit back and encourage these same firearms (and ammunition) manufactures to refuse to deal with these same municipalities that advocate for civillian dissarment and these “common sense” measures. Not selling to freedom hating overlords would have the added benefit of freeing up precious resources for the rest of us too.

  43. And I suppose those who will depend on the Chicago pension funds for their retirement are OK with a lesser return on their investment. I mean, you can always make up your retirement shortfall with Social Security, because its flush with cash…

  44. I thought a person who had dual citizenship could not hold public office in the USA? Rahm should go back to Israel and talk to his dad about the good old days of blowing buses up…

      • I’m not sure about Emmanuelle’s family involvement, but car bombs and bus bombs were a military tool of the founders of Israel.

        A decent documentary is on the history of the device called appropriately enough Car Bomb. Came out in 2008, and you can likely find it on Hulu or Netflix.

        Covers several countries and several disparate groups, one of which was interviews with Israeli FFs on their use of the car bomb as a weapon.

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