over the weekend more than 15 big
American companies cut ties with the
National Rifle Association this is the
big gun lobby group that has long been
seen as the absolute obstacle to any
kind of meaningful gun control in
America the company's decided that they
no longer wanted to offer discounts or
affiliated credit cards to NRA members
which is a big shift and it reflects the
huge consumer pressure that they're
feeling through social media
most of these decisions to cut ties by
say Hertz and Delta Airlines are largely
symbolic so they're certainly not
changing anything about the way guns are
sold in America but they may be changing
perception about whether the NRA is an
unstoppable force the big ways you could
deal with the huge influx of guns in the
US are - one is by going after the gun
manufacturers but they're pretty small
companies and it's relatively hard to go
after them the more obvious way is by
making it harder or less attractive for
retailers and payments processors to
participate in gun sales right now
PayPal does not allow you to buy
firearms through their website in theory
the big banks and Visa and MasterCard
could do the same thing and that would
make it much harder for someone who
wants to run to the store and pick up a
bunch of guns
similarly if big retailers such as say
kabila the big sports equipment and
store decided to stop stalking semi
automatics again they would be much
harder for people to get them and it
might slow down the flood of violence
that we've been experiencing what really
needs to happen if the US is to address
its gun violence problem it's probably a
change in the law making it harder for
people to buy guns making some guns less
available and so far the NRA has been an
unstoppable political force the question
will be the fact that these companies
are getting now getting involved and
it's a social media pressure in the wake
of the parklands shooting he is putting
the weight on the other side whether
that will finally lead to the kinds of
law changes that the US probably needs