Kansas GOP Takes Up Gun Bill Targeting Banks’ Muni Business.

A Kansas bill would block governmental entities in the state from working with companies that have restrictive gun policies, adding to a wave of GOP legislation that’s targeted Wall Street’s public-finance business.

A group of Republican Kansas state senators put forward legislation last week that would bar companies from government contracts worth at least $100,000 unless they can certify in writing that they don’t “discriminate” against the firearms and ammunition industries.

Kellie Warren, one of the senators, introduced the proposal, and it was referred to the Senate’s Committee on Federal and State Affairs. She is the chair of the chamber’s judiciary committee and a candidate for state attorney general. Other co-sponsors include Senate Majority Leader Larry Alley and Renee Erickson, Senate assistant majority leader. While the legislature is Republican-controlled, Governor Laura Kelly is a Democrat.

If enacted, the bill risks curtailing banks’ municipal-bond underwriting in the state. Borrowers there sold about $3.8 billion of munis last year, ranking it roughly 30th among U.S. states, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

It’s the latest effort by local Republican officials nationwide to punish Wall Street firms for their gun policies. GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota and West Virginia have also introduced legislation, conceived by an influential gun group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, that aims to punish Wall Street for what it deems to be restrictive gun policies.

Warren said in an emailed statement Tuesday that she and other GOP leaders are seeking to address “corporate gun control”

“The leftist mob has a radical agenda designed to circumvent our constitutional rights in order to re-engineer society by attacking the gun trade,” she said in the statement. “Knowing their policies are deeply unpopular in Kansas, they seek to enforce their agenda through woke corporations seeking to cancel our right to bear arms and bully those involved in the commerce of firearms and ammunition.”

The legislation impacts all governmental entities in the state, including state agencies and political subdivisions, which Kansas state code defines as any government body that can levy taxes.

The effort builds on a law passed in Texas last year that has successfully shut out Wall Street behemoths like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. from underwriting most municipal in the state, which is a key public-finance market.

Bloomberg Markets

By Amanda Albright and Danielle Moran

February 15, 2022



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