FedEx was one of the major companies that chose to stick with its National Rifle Association affinity program following the Parkland shooting, unlike an array of firms including United Airlines, Hertz, SimpliSafe, Symantec and host of others. Now, though, the Memphis-based shipping giant is dumping the NRA.
But FedEx claims it has nothing to do with what happened in Pittsburgh.
The change of tack comes just days after a gunman killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The $56 billion logistics company says the closure of its NRA discount program from Nov. 4 has no connection to that incident or any other shooting. Rather, the NRA just didn’t bring in enough business to merit its own deal. It’s among dozens of organizations FedEx plans to move to new pricing programs, and the company has been notifying customers since early October.
So it was all just a coinkydink that FedEx chose this week to announce the move.
This is a Bloomberg report, so author John Foley naturally concludes that the FedEx announcement and the earlier cancellations mean the NRA is no longer big and intimidating enough to fend off moves like this. The name on the web site is also why you get a paragraph like this:
Gun-rights lobbyists have resisted both technology that could make firearms safer and no-brainer efforts like making more federal data on firearms incidents readily available. But companies are becoming less timid. When retailers Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart and Kroger pledged to end sales of assault rifles earlier this year, their shares didn’t suffer. As customers and investors change their views, businesses no longer need to take an overtly political stance – they can just follow the money.