October 30, 2018

FedEx Just Ended Its NRA Discount

After Parkland, the shipping giant had refused to cut ties with the gun group.

A member of gun control group Gays Against Guns demands FedEx, Hertz, and Wyndham end discounts for NRA members at a protest in 2016.Erik Mcgregor/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire

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Days after a mass shooting at at Pittsburgh synagogue left 11 people dead, FedEx announced it would no longer offer discounts to National Rifle Association members, according to Reuters. It’s the latest organization to sever ties with the gun rights group in the wake of mass shootings that have sparked nationwide demands for stricter gun laws—legislation the NRA adamantly opposes.

More than a dozen companies dropped the discounts and special offers they awarded NRA members in the wake of the February school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Those businesses included First National Bank, Delta, and United Airlines. The decisions came in response to a pressure from gun violence prevention advocates, who waged a campaign on social media with the hashtag #BoycottNRA.

But FedEx, which provided up to a 26-percent discount rate to NRA Business Alliance members through its FedEx Advantage program, stuck with the controversial gun rights group after Parkland. At the time, the company released a statement affirming that it would continue to provide benefits to the group’s members because it had never changed rates “in response to their politics, beliefs or positions on issues,” even though the FedEx’s positions on “issues of gun policy and safety differ from those of the National Rifle Association.” At the end of February, ThinkProgress reported that FedEx’s refusal to sever its relationship with the NRA occurred in the larger context of the company’s efforts to court the business of gun manufacturers.

Now, the shipping giant has reversed course. Though the decision comes just three days after the Pittsburgh massacre, Reuters reported that it had nothing to do with any particular shooting. According to the news outlet, the NRA is among the several organizations FedEx plans to move to a new pricing program because the gun rights group apparently did not generate enough business to make a bespoke discount deal worthwhile.

FedEx has had its own first-hand experience with gun violence. In 2014, a FedEx package handler shot six colleagues at the company’s suburban Atlanta facility before killing himself.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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