Major League Baseball franchises have generally tried to stay out of the gun-control fight. The Chicago White Sox apparently didn’t get the memo.

On June 5, the White Sox used their official social media account to publicly endorse Everytown for Gun Safety and other gun-control organizations on what gun-control groups have branded “Gun Violence Awareness Day.” The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms responded by adding the franchise to its “Don’t Feed the Gun Prohibitionists” list — a consumer advocacy effort identifying businesses whose corporate positions support organizations actively working against Second Amendment rights.

For White Sox fans who happen to own firearms, that’s a problem the franchise just created for itself.

The White Sox X post that started the trouble

The franchise didn’t just acknowledge “Gun Violence Awareness Day” passively. The White Sox actively endorsed gun-control organizations in a graphic posted to X:

“Today is Gun Violence Awareness Day. The White Sox are committed to seeking innovative solutions to gun violence. We are proud to support these organizations and their efforts to help create a safer community.”

The graphic featured the White Sox logo alongside “Stand against gun violence” framing — the standard rhetorical language used by Everytown for Gun Safety, the Bloomberg-funded organization that actively lobbies for gun control legislation, funds gun-control candidates, and exists to advance restrictive firearms policy.

That’s not neutral commentary on a serious topic. That’s a Major League Baseball franchise using its corporate platform to endorse a specific political organization that explicitly works to restrict the constitutional rights of millions of Americans — including, presumably, many of the franchise’s own fans.

Gottlieb: “The White Sox just struck out with a lot of fans”

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb responded with the kind of statement that should resonate with TTAG readers — and with anyone who has noticed corporate America’s increasing willingness to take political positions on contested issues without considering how those positions affect their own customer base:

“The White Sox just struck out with a lot of fans, judging from the reaction we’re seeing on social media. We’re adding the team to our list of organizations which no longer deserve the support of gun owners in Illinois, or anywhere else.”

The CCRKBA list currently includes approximately 200 businesses and corporate leaders whose policies or public positions align with gun-control advocacy. The list, which the organization encourages members and supporters to consider when making purchasing decisions, represents a sustained effort to apply consumer pressure where political pressure has been insufficient.

Gottlieb explained the rationale for the list:

“When we started this project, we were sometimes surprised, and in some cases disappointed, at some of the businesses we placed on the list. We discovered several brand name businesses and corporate leaders who evidently have a quiet agenda to limit gun rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The listing is our way of letting current and potential patrons have the knowledge about what their hard earned dollars may actually be funding.”

That framing matters. Most consumers don’t make purchasing decisions with detailed knowledge of which corporations are quietly funding gun-control advocacy or endorsing organizations like Everytown. The CCRKBA list closes that information gap by making the corporate alignments visible to consumers who care about Second Amendment issues.

The marketplace can decide this

Gottlieb’s framing of the consumer-advocacy approach is exactly the kind of free-market response gun-rights advocates have been making for years:

“Let the marketplace decide. Over 100 million American gun owners represent a sizeable consumer bloc, and they will decide on their own where to spend their money.”

That’s a substantive economic argument, not just political rhetoric. The American firearms-owning population represents tens of millions of consumers with significant collective purchasing power. When major corporations publicly align themselves with organizations actively working to restrict that population’s constitutional rights, those corporations are making a marketing decision — they’re signaling that they prefer alignment with gun-control politics over the patronage of gun-owning customers.

That’s a corporation’s right. It’s also the customers’ right to respond by taking their business elsewhere.

For the White Sox specifically, the relevant question is whether the franchise actually thought through the customer demographic implications of its post. Illinois has roughly 2.5 million firearm owners. Major League Baseball franchises depend heavily on ticket sales, merchandise, broadcast viewership, and attendance — all of which are sensitive to fan goodwill. Alienating a substantial portion of the franchise’s natural fan base to endorse a political organization isn’t obviously good business.

Notable businesses already on the CCRKBA list

The CCRKBA list contains approximately 200 businesses and corporate leaders. Some of the businesses that might surprise TTAG readers include:

AMC Theatres

AT&T

Burger King

Chipotle

Comcast

Delta Airlines

Dick’s Sporting Goods (longtime gun-rights critic following Parkland)

DoorDash

Hard Rock Cafe

Levi Strauss & Co.

Los Angeles Clippers

Microsoft

Panera Bread

PayPal

Progressive Insurance

Uber

Yelp

Warner Bros. Discovery (formerly AOL/Time Warner)

That’s not a comprehensive list, but it gives TTAG readers a sense of how broad corporate alignment with gun-control politics has become. Many businesses that consumers interact with regularly, such as fast food, transportation, entertainment, technology, and financial services, have at various points made corporate decisions to align with gun-control advocacy or to limit firearms commerce.

The full CCRKBA list is available through the organization’s news release on the White Sox addition, and the broader CCRKBA consumer advocacy work is documented through the organization’s ongoing materials.

Why corporate endorsement of Everytown is different

There’s a meaningful distinction between corporations acknowledging that “gun violence” is a public concern and corporations actively endorsing Everytown for Gun Safety. The White Sox post did the latter — and that’s why CCRKBA responded with the consumer advocacy listing.

Everytown isn’t a neutral public-safety organization. It’s a Bloomberg-funded gun-control advocacy operation that explicitly works to enact restrictive firearms legislation. The organization actively opposes Second Amendment protections, funds gun-control candidates, supports state-level Glock-pattern handgun bans, and works to restrict the firearms rights of law-abiding Americans across multiple policy fronts.

A corporation endorsing Everytown isn’t expressing concern about violence. It’s endorsing a specific political organization that seeks to restrict the constitutional rights of millions of Americans — including, in the case of the White Sox, millions of the franchise’s own potential customers.

That’s the distinction that should matter to consumers who happen to own firearms. Acknowledging that violence is a problem is one thing. Endorsing the political organization seeking to restrict your constitutional rights is something else entirely.

Gottlieb’s closing

Gottlieb closed with the baseball metaphor TTAG readers might appreciate:

“The White Sox just threw a spitball at their gun-owning fans. So far as we’re concerned, they’re swinging with cork bats.”

For the franchise, the CCRKBA addition is a reputational headache that probably won’t significantly affect attendance in the short term, but it represents the kind of slow-building consumer-brand damage that accumulates over time. For gun owners considering whether to spend their entertainment dollars on White Sox tickets, merchandise, or broadcast subscriptions, the franchise has now publicly told them what its political alignment looks like.

The marketplace, as Gottlieb noted, will decide what that’s worth.

For TTAG readers in Illinois and beyond, the White Sox’s June 5 post is a useful data point on which businesses are actively aligning with political organizations working to restrict Second Amendment rights — and which are choosing to keep politics out of their corporate communications. Both approaches are options. The CCRKBA list helps consumers make informed decisions about where to spend their money based on those corporate choices.