Post-Highland Park Fourth of July mass shooting, they're keeping score on weapons makers, business partners

You don’t have to look far to find local economic ties to assault rifle manufacturers.

Sometimes, you don’t even have to look outside the cities where life has been upended at the barrel of such weapons.

Look no farther than Highland Park, home to several attorneys who work in the Chicago office of the global law firm DLA Piper, which is defending Smith & Wesson in a civil lawsuit filed by survivors of the 2022 mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade that left seven people dead and dozens wounded in the north suburb.

“We know a lot of people who work at that firm, who live here in Highland Park, who were at the parade,” said Stephanie Jacobs, who heard the shots fired in her hometown. “The irony and the hypocrisy is just crazy.”

Jacobs teamed with fellow corporate attorney Daniel Perlman to form the nonprofit Highland Park Peace Project, compiling a public database of firms and companies with documented ties to weapon manufacturers.

Also noting businesses that refuse to deal with companies whose products have been used in mass shootings across the United States, Jacobs and Perlman encourage consumers to speak out with their pocketbooks by doing business with “certified heroes” and cutting off the “exposed enablers.”

They’ve graded more than 180 companies since launching last year, scouring U.S. Security and Exchange Commission filings and other public records to uncover connections to the gun industry, adding 60 companies to the list for public shame over the past few months.

“Finding these things out and putting the data out there, it's really important that people know this and understand,” Jacobs said. “The goal is not to vilify these law firms. The goal is to get them to change what they're doing, to do better, to not enable these companies anymore. That's really what we're trying to do.”

They’ve stumbled across stark examples of business interests colliding with tragedy, including for the global professional services firm KPMG, whose New York City headquarters were locked down during a shooting that killed four people elsewhere in a Manhattan office building last summer.

The Highland Park Peace Project revealed KPMG has served as the public auditor for Smith & Wesson, which produces long guns similar to the one used in that attack. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

“Smith & Wesson’s a tiny little company with like a $300 million market cap. It's not not driving KPMG's business,” Perlman said. “It's remarkable that these CEOs and managing partners don't see the bigger picture here.”

With enough scrutiny, Jacobs said, “enough people are going to change auditors because of it, and that's going to affect them, and maybe then they'll do the right thing.”

Looking ahead, Perlman wants to target recruiters who he thinks will have trouble attracting talent in the next generation of corporate leaders. “I think we're going to be very successful in changing minds.”

While the average consumer isn’t dealing with global accounting firms — or any of the machinery and industrial suppliers flagged in project’s latest tranche of alleged enablers — their website puts more familiar names on blast, too.

Walmart gets dinged for online weapons sales, along with FedEx and UPS for delivering them. The same goes for major sporting good companies like Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s, which didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Walmart, which stopped selling AR-15-style rifles in 2015 and halted sales of ammunition for military-style weapons in 2019, says on its website that "our heritage as a company has always been in serving sportsmen and hunters, and we plan to continue to do so in a responsible way." The company doesn't sell handguns either.

Also listed as an "enabler" is Amazon, which prohibits firearm sales but carries other products from companies that produce guns.

Perlman said the Peace Project has gotten muted responses from companies notified that they had landed on the database of “enablers,” with some law firms and businesses privately pleading to be removed and others standing firmly with their clients.

Endorsed by the nonprofit research group are Costco and REI, which have shunned weapon manufacturers, as well as Apple Pay and PayPal, which don’t allow their platforms to be used for gun or ammunition purchases.

Jacobs and Perlman rate dozens more companies across the finance, tech and manufacturing industries.

“People want to do something and people don't know what to do, people at all levels, everyday consumers like you and me as well as high-powered decision makers at corporations,” Jacobs said. “Everyone who cares about this issue, everyone who cares about their children and wants to do something — this is such an easy thing to do.”