New Shift in Attempted Gun Control

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/business/dealbook/in-new-tack-in-gun-debate-a-call-to-investigate-smith-wessons-disclosures.html?ref=nyregion&_r=1 said:

This summer, she convinced the New York City Employee Retirement System, the city’s largest pension fund, to explore divesting itself of its holdings of gun retailers like Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

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This is dumb on a number of levels:

• If they're picking individual stocks then by definition they're not using index funds in their pension fund, which means they're most likely ripping their customers off on fees
• They're not only stock picking and probably charging high fees, they're playing politics and probably hurting their returns by doing so
• I doubt they'll have any effect on Walmart whatsoever. Plenty of other people to buy Walmart stock, myself included (it's a sizable chunk of a Consumer Staples mutual fund I have)
• It's downright hilarious they're even talking about Walmart. I guess they realized that S&W and Ruger are the only publicly traded firearms companies
• They're probably just playing politics to distract NYers from the legal con they're running on fees, when they're not outright stealing from the fund (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100631149)

Stop selling guns to the NYPD and its members.

Problem solved.

:shrug:

All they're going to accomplish is lowering returns for their fund members. Heck, they might even run the fund into the ground. Not that they probably care, I'm sure the managers are getting rich off their fees. They're basically the stereotypical 1% that the protesters were talking about without even realizing it.

If the fund members were smart they'd fire these managers before COB today, scrap this stock picking model, and go to a TSP style fund (with a management fee of 0.029% https://www.tsp.gov/InvestmentFunds/FundsOverview/expenseRatio.html).

I'd have to Google around, but I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say the best way to guarantee much lower returns than average is to go with a high fee, stock picking system with political stock picking thrown in for good measure

Requiring gun manufacturers to list misuse of guns?

That needs to be expanded to automobiles, widely used in violations of the Mann Act. Most mynas transported across state lines for immoral porpoises are transported by automobile. If you have ever seen "Thunder Road" you know the auto industry was complicit in illegal alcohol too.

Oh, seriously, should manufacturers of products be required to list misuse of their products?

Will gun banners consider the social cost of disarming the isolated, the old or weak in the face of criminals willing to use brute force, superior numbers, knives, clubs and other non-firearm lethal weapons?

"Will gun banners consider the social cost of disarming the isolated, the old or weak in the face of criminals willing to use brute force, superior numbers, knives, clubs and other non-firearm lethal weapons?"

The gun banners don't care. They have their political agenda and will not consider the long term effects of their actions. Just look at the actions of the present administration for proof.

Carl N. Brown said:

Will gun banners consider the social cost of disarming the isolated, the old or weak in the face of criminals willing to use brute force, superior numbers, knives, clubs and other non-firearm lethal weapons?

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This "new tack" against Second Amendment rights is not just a threat to our capacity to defend ourselves physically against tyranny. It is also part of the much more general assault on the very notion that human beings are capable of moral responsibility and self-restraint.

If individuals can't make decisions for themselves, where is the threshold for “too much” government intervention? Is there any limit on this curve of government control?

There doesn’t seem to be a facet of human life left sacred and untouchable to leftist government, because it has no inherently limiting principle.

The demonization of the NRA is going into play as well.

Speedo66 said:

NYS, for all it's faults, presently has one of the best funded public pension systems in the country. Thank god Cuomo was never able to get his hands on it.

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One of the best funded or one of the best managed? After all, Bernie Madoff was pretty well funded.

If they're considered well managed, those other public pension systems must be setting the bar awfully low. I'm no expert, but from that article it really sounds like the managers are churning the fund to generate more fees and commissions for themselves and using politics as cover.

Not a well thought out cover either, after all Walmart complies fully with their laws (68 GCA/93 Brady). I guess they're saying they don't think civilians should own guns period, even civilians who went though the process that anti-gunners set up.

Attempting to burden mfgs with added costs and bureaucracy in order to drive them out of business is not new.

I mentioned the NYS pension system, not NYC. The article is about the city system. NYS is well managed, and because of it, well funded.

NYC's, despite all the political shenanigans, is still doing well. At this point anyway.

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Heck, the whole market has done very well for the last 5 - 7 years. The question is how much are their shenanigans holding back their performance and raising fees/commissions/etc?

Edit to add: well, that didn't take long on Google. Apparently mismanagement, high fees, and playing politics like the move described in the OP has cost their members quite a bit.

http://marketurbanism.com/2015/05/11/the-many-shades-of-public-pension-mismanagement/

On April 8, the New York Times ran a report about how, in the last 10 years, New York City’s five pension funds—for police, fire, teachers, board of education, and general employees—missed out on an estimated $2.5 billion in returns because of high fees and poor investments by their Wall Street advisors. The Times cited a press release by city comptroller Scott Stringer, who had ordered an analysis of the $160 billion fund. Here’s a quote from Stringer’s release:

Wall Street managers of private asset classes such as private equity, hedge funds and real estate fell $2.6 billion short of target benchmarks after fees. Over the same period, managers of public asset classes exceeded the benchmark slightly. However, those managers gobbled up more than 95 percent of the value added—over $2 billion—leaving almost no extra return for the Funds…The poor performance of private asset classes ($2.6 billion below benchmark), combined with the marginally better performance in public markets, has cost the City pension funds nearly $2.5 billion in lost value over the past ten years.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/n...rk-city-pension-gains.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2

Edit to add further: ok, so the NY Times article above is kinda contradicting the NY Times article in the OP. From http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/n...rk-city-pension-gains.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2 it sounds like NYC is paying Wall Street managers and putting their money in regular funds, not funds specifically for NYC funds. They're also paying a higher expense ratio then they should, hence the 2.5 billion over 10 years #.

However, if they're putting their money in regular old funds that means the makeup of those funds isn't controlled by NYC politicians. So they can't sell Walmart stock because they don't like that Walmart sells guns in their stores.

Quote from Speedo66:

Here's the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/bu...=nyregion&_r=0

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There are a couple of things I routinely ignore.

1. Coyotes howling.

2. Kids throwing tantrums.

3. The New York Times.



Obligatory grin:

Terry

Misuse of a product? Add in...computers. EVERY identity thief(probably) needed a computer.
Don't forget...digital cameras too! A camera, computer, modem and internet hook up...the "assault weapon" of every child porn/molester/sex trade trafficer.

That whole idea is just plain stupid.

Mark

How about requiring labels with nutritional information for bullets. I'm all for that.

Ooh, the lead comes in 100% lifetime doses!

SHANGHAI McCoy - "The demonization of the NRA is going into play as well."

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The demonization of the NRA and its members has been racing in high gear for the past 50 years. The object or goal of the Marxist Socialist inspired "progressive" libs is to vilify the NRA members as "dirty, filthy, detestable vermin."

The "progressives" and their toady-like far left media are no different than the Nazis who demonized the Jews in the '30s, and the communists who demonized anyone who was not a good march-in-lockstep Marxist.

Same ol' same ol'.

L.W.

I very seriously doubt the stock holders are going to want their investments pulled from profitable companies for some ill-conceived notion of morality, even if they believe the lie. If that were true, the human exploitation (nearly slavery) by companies that use off shore manufacturing would have bankrupted them by now.

Stock holders care about one thing where their stocks are concerned. One.

Shouldn't the citizens and debt holders of the US government should be provided information concerning how many times weapons sold by the US government have been used worldwide in crimes, terrorism and acts of war too?

Really nothing new here, is it? They are trying the same tactics as the California Teachers Pension discovering they were well placed with Cerebus and therefore, Bushmaster. Lot of good it did them trying to get out. It's been years and they still haven't sold off Remington.

I wonder how many PETA sympathizers would be astonished to discover they have stocks in industrialized farm and ranch operations? Like, Tyson. Oh, the outrage.

The SEC and product liability laws are going to run interference on it. Just because a politician wants something doesn't mean they get it. Like, Ms Clinton thinking out loud that we should "consider" the Australian Confiscation as a model for gun control here. It's Not Going To Happen.

I'd put more stock in working the Do Not Fly list as a blanket anti gun purchasing scheme.

Leanwolf said:

The demonization of the NRA and its members has been racing in high gear for the past 50 years. The object or goal of the Marxist Socialist inspired "progressive" libs is to vilify the NRA members as "dirty, filthy, detestable vermin."

The "progressives" and their toady-like far left media are no different than the Nazis who demonized the Jews in the '30s, and the communists who demonized anyone who was not a good march-in-lockstep Marxist.

Same ol' same ol'.

L.W.

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True Leanwolf, but the language has gotten uglier, calling us terrorists (instead of just dumb rednecks..) and the government has gotten involved with the whole IRS "attention" both during Klinton and Oblahma.