Giving Compass' Take:

• Since 2016, this famous blue jean brand has been taking action, donating and advocating for stronger gun laws and weighing in on issues that are impacting our world. Fast Company takes an inside look into their fight. 

• What other large companies are helping stop gun violence? What are the best ways at advocating for stronger policies? 

• Here's how researchers are tackling gun violence despite no federal funding. 

When a customer walked into a dressing room at a Levi Strauss store in Georgia with a loaded gun in late 2016 and accidentally shot himself in the foot, the company decided to publish an open letter asking its customers not to carry guns while they shop. “That bullet could have hit one of my employees,” says Chip Bergh, the company’s CEO. “It could have hit a customer in the store.”

It was a step that many other retailers–from Target to Starbucks–had already taken. But when the Parkland shooting happened in 2018, killing 17 students and teachers, Levi’s decided to go further. Bergh published a letter about the country’s epidemic of gun violence and the company set up a $1 million fund to support organizations that are working to put in place “common sense regulations or laws that would prevent guns being in the hands of people who shouldn’t own a gun,” he says.

As a father, Bergh says the situation had recently hit even closer to home for him. “My daughter goes to school in San Francisco, and they practice lockdown drills more than they do earthquake drills,” he says. “That says something about our country.” Predictably, when the company announced its support for gun control, some customers complained. But the company had taken similarly controversial stands in the past and was willing to weather any short-term impact. In 1992, for example, when it pulled its sponsorship from the Boy Scouts in response to the organization’s ban on gay troop leaders, it got more than 100,000 letters in response, most saying that they would boycott the brand.

Read the full article about Levi's fight against gun violence by Adele Peters at Fast Company.