Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is Going After Anti-Gun Banks
Jose Nino
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has currently been targeting several big banks, such as JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America for breaking Texas law. The law in question is anti-discrimination legislation that punishes banks for refusing to conduct business with gun companies and implementing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies.
“As Attorney General, my job is to uphold state law and ensure that Texas remains a friendly state for companies to do business—including those that produce the energy we depend on and the firearms that secure our safety and freedom,” the letter states.
Texas laws bar any bank that underwrites any municipal bonds in the Lone Star State from treating gun companies in a different manner from any other companies. In other words, under this law, banks cannot refuse to do business with the gun industry because they are against the products.
In order for the state government to divest from these anti-gun companies such as Citibank, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar will have to take action.
The anti-gun crowd knows that conventional forms of gun control measures will be difficult to pass. In turn, they will use corporate actors to flex their muscles against the pro-Second Amendment community.
In effect, anti-gun businesses function as de facto Pinkertons for Gun Control Inc. This is a unique kind of fight that will require pro-gun activists to get creative and pursue bold measures that rein in rogue corporate actors.
Public and private entities must learn that their political misbehavior will be punished through prudent state action. What Ken Paxton is doing in Texas is a good first step in making the prudential use of state power against rogue corporate actors a normal part of American politics.
Hopefully, other AGs in red states follow in Paxton’s footsteps.
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