Smith & Wesson

Smith & Wesson does a PR favor for Massachusetts. The maker of assault weapons is finally moving its headquarters and production lines from Massachusetts to eastern Tennessee.

CEO Mark Smith said a proposed law banning the manufacture of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in the Bay State (excluding sales to law enforcement, military and foreign governments) forced his hand.

If passed, the law would impact more than 60 percent of S&W’s revenues.

But S&W should have abandoned the state in 1998 after Massachusetts first banned the sale of assault weapons. Then-governor Mitt Romney made the ban permanent in 2004.

Massachusetts took a PR hit for the hypocrisy of allowing S&W to produce products that could not be legally purchased in the state.

Sandy Phillips, whose daughter was gunned down in the Aurora mass shooting, accused Massachusetts of exporting bloodshed to the rest of the country.

“These weapons are made in your state, but they can’t be sold in your state,” she said during an April press conference to unveil the bill to ban AR manufacturing.

Good luck to the 550 workers in Springfield who will lose their jobs in 2023 when S&W opens its Maryville, TN plant.

S&W, which has been based in Springfield since 1852, will leave 1,000 jobs there, including such operations as forging, machining and assembling revolvers.

Greenwashing ESG. Glass Lewis, proxy advisor, urges shareholders of BHP to vote against its Climate Transition Action Plan at the Oct. 14 annual meeting because it’s more of a PR stunt than a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Glass Lewis says the CTAP falls short of the goals set by the Paris Accords.

It applauded BHP, which is the world’s biggest mining operation, for disclosing plans that it plans to take to reduce global warming but believes it is ”unclear if the company’s current targets are science-based.”

The move by Glass Lewis will encourage institutional shareholders to challenge other climate plans put up for investor approval.

Dan Gocher, director of climate and environment at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, told the Financial Times that companies “will no longer be rewarded for their direction of travel and the climate plans will now be assessed on substance.”

BHP plans to discuss the CTAP with Glass Lewis. “We believe that shareholders and other stakeholders benefit from greater disclosure and ambition, which the climate transition action plans delivers,” it said in a statement.

Glass Lewis applauds BHP’s disclosure and ambition. It’s just that the proposals on decarbonization fall short of the mark.

Facebook flops on Trump ban. Mark Zuckerberg banned Donald Trump from the platform for two years because of his role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.

The site, however, is running ads for Team Trump PAC that claim the 2020 election was rigged and the loser of that tally really won. Aren't those claims the reason that Facebook banned the president?

Civil rights groups demand that Facebook ban the Team Trump PAC because it was established and controlled by the former president.

More than 140K people have signed a petition addressed to Zuckerberg and FB COO Sheryl Sandberg calling on them to dump the Team Trump PAC.

By running the Trump PAC ads, Facebook allows itself “to be a megaphone for the same lies and hate that led to the deadly assault on the US Capitol,” said Rose Lang-Maso, campaign manager at Free Press Action.

It should be an easy call for Zuckerberg.