On Saturday afternoon, as hundreds of thousands of people joined the March for Our Lives around the nation, I was on the phone with Michael Corbat, chief executive of Citigroup.
Mr. Corbat had taken the remarkable step on Thursday of authorizing a new set of rules to restrict gun sales by Citi’s clients, the first time a Wall Street bank had used its position to influence the gun control debate.
Five weeks earlier, a gunman’s attack at a high school in Parkland, Fla., had left 17 dead. Soon afterward, I wrote a column challenging the business world to “effectively set new rules for the sales of guns in America,” given Washington’s intransigence.
Other companies soon acted — BlackRock and Dick’s Sporting Goods, among them — but Citi’s decision has the potential to serve as a template for others in the finance industry. Citi said it would require retailers to place restrictions on the sale of guns to anyone under the age of 21, to stop selling bump stocks and high-capacity magazines and to perform background checks. Otherwise, it would not do business with them.
Mr. Corbat, a gun owner who said the decision had not been made lightly, found the response to the bank’s move instructive.
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