Nevada is responding to a recent wave of mass shootings by cutting off taxpayer money that goes to companies that make or sell assault weapons.
Nevada Treasurer Zach Conin, a first-term Democrat who will be re-elected this year, said the decision was long overdue.
“Companies that make money from the production and sale of assault weapons pose a risk in the market that I do not want to go,” said Mr. Conin. “Investing is essentially a plan for the future, and it’s time for Nevada to start investing in a better future where our kids aren’t killed in the classroom.”
The department will require the official approval of the Nevada Finance Council, which includes Mr. Conin and Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat. If implemented, the state treasury will sell $ 89 million from its nearly $ 50 billion public investment portfolio.
“The moral hazard for investing in these companies is too high and greater than we are willing to bear,” Mr Conin said.
The ransom is an increasingly popular response to mass shootings among Democrats at the state level. Since 2019, the Connecticut and Rhode Island Treasuries have banned the use of tax dollars to subsidize gun manufacturers.
The strategy was most used locally. In 2016, New York lost a $ 59 billion civil servants pension fund not only to gun manufacturers but also to major arms retailers.
Nevada took its step after a wave of mass shootings. Earlier this week, authorities said a 45-year-old man, upset by his surgeon, returned to Tulsa Hospital, Oklahoma, and shot dead a doctor and three others.
The shooting came less than a week after an 18-year-old man opened fire at an elementary school in Uwalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers.
Less than two weeks earlier, an 18-year-old man motivated by racist hatred opened fire at a supermarket in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people and injuring three others.
President Biden and Democrats in Congress have called for a renewed ban on assault weapons in response to the massacre.
“It’s not about depriving anyone of their rights,” Mr Biden said in a statement to the nation on Thursday about gun violence. “It’s about protecting children, about protecting families. … We are talking about protecting our freedom to go to school, to the grocery store, to the church without being shot. “
Mr Biden is also urging lawmakers to change liability laws to allow gun manufacturers to be prosecuted for firing and to hold gun owners accountable for not keeping firearms locked up.
