Gays Against Guns: civil disobedience campaign to target gun companies

Hundreds of gay activists will begin a campaign of civil disobedience and direct action against gun companies and their supporters on Monday, to demand an end to the epidemic of gun violence blighting the US.

Members of Gays Against Guns, a group formed in the wake of the massacre of 49 people at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando earlier this summer, said they would “no longer stand by and watch the gun industry profit from death”.

Organizers of the collective, which has more than 300 members in New York and chapters in nine other cities across the country, said they were prepared to break the law and get arrested in their fight against gun manufacturers, their shareholders, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its corporate backers.

Ken Kidd, who is helping lead the group’s direct action campaign, which kicks off on Monday, said GAG would go much further than other gun control pressure groups, such as the Brady campaign and Everytown, by “targeting not only politicians, but other baddies that work with the killing machine”.

As well as directly targeting the US two biggest gun companies, Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co, the campaign – which is modeled on and includes members of the 1980s direct action gay rights campaign group Act Up – will also go after their investors.

“We are targeting corporations that either invest in the gun industry or align themselves with the NRA,” Kidd told fellow activists at a planning meeting at The Center in Manhattan’s West Village last week.

On Monday, the group will gather for a “die-in” at the headquarters of the investment firm BlackRock, which is one of the biggest investors in Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger, whose assault rifles have been used in several recent mass shootings.


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“Here is a company whose CEO, Laurence Fink, prides himself on their socially conscious investment yet comes right out and tells clients that mass shootings worked to their financial advantage,” said campaigner Cathy Marino-Thomas. “They’re smart enough to acknowledge they profit from massacres but can’t find a way to unload those stocks? That’s amoral.”

BlackRock said it held the gun companies’ stock on behalf of third-party investors in its US aerospace and defense fund, and pointed out that it had other portfolios in which clients can choose to avoid investment in firearms, tobacco and alcohol manufacturers.

“BlackRock values diversity and has a history of supporting the LGBT community,” a spokesman said. “We condemn senseless acts of violence in any form including the recent tragedy in Orlando.”

John Grauwiler, a 45-year-old New York City school teacher and cofounder of GAG, said that after BlackRock, the group would target other funds that invest in gun stocks and then companies that partner with the NRA. “It’s us or them,” he said. “End your relationship with the death business or the LGBTQ community ends its relationship with you.”

Companies that offer discounts to NRA members include all of the major car rental companies, Visa, and the insurance firm MetLife.

“These companies give discounts to NRA members and we want them to know that you can court the LGBT dollar, but if you get into bed with the NRA, we’re going to fucking break up with you,” said Kidd, an administrator and veteran LGBT activist who took to the streets as part of Act Up and Queer Nation in the 80s. “They will know we are a force to be reckoned with.”

On its Facebook page, GAG declares: “Queer complacency is over. We call for a ban on assault weapons and sensible gun regulation. We will not let our 49 siblings’ death be in vain.”

Tim Murphy, a novelist and GAG campaigner, said the Orlando massacre showed that the community could no longer sit back and watch “the gun industry and the gun lobby refuse any gun control laws of any sort”.





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