Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page

Bank Shots
An Open Letter to Bank One Management

by David Codrea
codrea4@adelphia.net

Published here September 16, 2002

September 14, 2002

Carter Warren
Chief Marketing Officer
BANK ONE CORPORATION
1 Bank One Plaza
Chicago, Illinois 60670
312-732-4000

CC: Jamie Dimon
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Dear Mr. Warren,

I received your invitation to accept a "Pre-Approved Bank One Platinum Visa card". Let me instead invite Bank One and its management to go to hell.

Why? Because according to The Detroit Free Press, the Detroit Police are sponsoring another ludicrous gun buyback/amnesty program today, and "Bank One is assisting the effort financially." [http://www.freep.com/news/locway/guns6_20020906.htm]

Bank One's website claims: "We believe our customers are the most important people we know."

Yeah, right, that's why you want them disarmed and helpless. Like one violent career criminal is going to give up the tools of his trade. And like the Detroit Police, with 500 backlogged disciplinary cases, are the only ones who can be trusted with guns.
[http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/ecops10_20020910.htm]

I clicked on your site's "Contact" tab at http://www.bankone.com/ and sent the following:

I just read a Detroit Free Press story saying you are underwriting a gun "buyback" program. I am sick and tired of subversive companies undermining the right to keep and bear arms, and intend to ask thousands of activists to join in a boycott of Bank One and its affiliates. After all, why would we make our money available to you so that you can turn around and help demonize private gun ownership/endanger American lives?

Perhaps your profits are so great that a percentage or two won't affect your bottom line. If not, too bad-- your idiot managers deciding to become social activists started this-- perhaps the stockholders will have cause to give them their walking papers after word of this spreads.

See: http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=1330 for further information.

Curious that just a few days after sending this I received a solicitation, isn't it? So much for listening to what people who contact you have to say

Perhaps you'll listen to this. American gun owners are sick of bloated corporate elitists using our money to undermine our rights. I'm posting this open letter on KeepAndBearArms.com, which typically receives hundreds of thousands of hits per month. I'm also circulating it to concerned gun rights activists with the request that they spread the word about Bank One's subversive stupidity, and about how disarmament zealot Al Gore bragged about a fundraising visit to the Park Avenue apartment of "Democratic donors Jamie Dimonand his wife Judith."
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/gore040499_full.htm]

Park Avenue apartment -- cool. Did people look like ants from up there? No doubt Mr. Dimon has the finest 24/7 security money can buy -- unlike those folks in Detroit's 7th Precinct. No wonder he sees no need for gun ownership by the masses. I wonder, if police conducted a buyback in his neighborhood how many people would rush forward to claim a $50 gift certificate and get another gun "off the streets" -- or don't rich liberals own guns? And as for "the most important people [you] know," it seems the ones he does (and politically supports) represent the dregs of hypocrisy -- gun grabbers who erode our rights under the protection of taxpayer-funded armed guards: Jean Carnahan, Dick Gephardt, Joe Biden, Tom Harkin, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee[source: opensecrets.org]

Bank One's management has abetted the disparagement of private gun ownership, promoted the concept that average people should not have guns, and contributed to those bent on disarming free Americans. In doing so, it has incurred the contempt of those of us who know better and who don't have to put up with its crap. Nice marketing move, geniuses.

Should you care to fire the manager(s) responsible for financing the "gun buyback," publicly apologize to gun owners, and support efforts and politicians promoting the Second Amendment, I will be happy to issue a revised opinion.

I have provided contact information below, not that I expect a reply. But if you do, understand that I intend to share your comments with the gun rights community.

Until then, I remain, in disgust,

David Codrea
[address removed from Internet copy]
codrea4@adelphia.net

Enclosure: Your stupid application form (ripped up)

David Codrea is a co-founder and director for the national pro-rights media campaign, Citizens of America (CitizensOfAmerica.org), and an advisor and contributor for KeepAndBearArms.com. His professional writing is featured often in Guns and Ammo magazine. Additionally, he is the national coordinator for A Petition for the Enforcement of the Second Amendment (KeepAndBearArms.com/Petition). His archives can be accessed here: KeepAndBearArms.com/Codrea.