Shareholders of US arms maker Sturm Ruger on Wednesday voted in favor of a resolution calling on the company to prepare a human rights impact report, a move that comes days after two shootings mass in the United States.
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“At the annual general meeting, management announced that its shareholders had approved a proposal put forward by CommonSpirit Health and other members of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility,” said a statement from the coalition of faith-based organizations.
They “succeeded in making the case to other shareholders that arms manufacturers cannot relinquish their roles and responsibilities,” the document adds.
The company did not immediately confirm the result of the vote to AFP. She had called for a vote against the proposal, which is not binding.
The vote comes days after a gunman massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers, and a racist shooting that left 10 black community members dead in Buffalo, in upstate New York.
The weapons involved were not produced by Sturm Ruger but the company is one of the few publicly traded arms manufacturers in the United States, along with Smith
The resolution calls in detail for Sturm Ruger’s board of directors to ask a third party to write an assessment and recommendation report on the impact of its decisions, practices and products on human rights. .
“By selling its weapons to civilians, Ruger assumes that they will be used safely,” the text notes. But the risk of them being misused, to the detriment of society, “is not considered in Ruger’s governance structures or in the policies or practices that would mitigate this threat,” it added.
The company says it has already taken steps to make guns safer and that the resolution is just one way for its advocates to advance gun control measures “that they don’t have.” been able to achieve by law or other means”.
