Vanguard: Divest retirement funds you manage from semi-automatic weapons manufacturers

To The Vanguard Group: We, the undersigned, are horrified by the level of gun violence in the United States today and the lack of concrete action being taken to address it. With over $4.5 trillion in assets, Vanguard is the largest provider of mutual funds and the second largest provider of exchange-traded funds in the U.S. It is also one of the top investors in American Outdoor Brands and Sturm Ruger & Company, both of which make semi-automatic rifles like the ones used in the Parkland school shooting and other mass shootings. As such, much of the nation's retirement funds are in part invested in companies that make semi-automatic weapons, making millions of us unwitting contributors to the violence we are so sickened by.

We insist that you divest your portfolios from these semi-automatic weapons manufacturers and will pressure our employers and companies we do business with who use Vanguard, including Autodesk, Clorox, Facebook, Google, Kaiser Permanente, Twitter, and others, to drop you as the manager of their employees' retirement savings plans if you do not do so within a short but reasonable time frame.