NEW YORK — With the nation’s emotions raw over the school massacre in Florida last week, evidence is mounting that investors may be rethinking their long, fraught relationship with the firearms industry.
BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money-management company, says it is exploring ways to remove gun companies from the portfolios of clients who no longer wish to invest in them.
In Florida, teachers expressed frustration that their own pension fund includes gun stocks, including American Outdoor Brands of Springfield, Mass., formerly Smith & Wesson, which made the assault rifle used to kill 17 students and educators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Activists have made similar appeals for years, but recent developments suggest that the financial community senses rising public pressure.
“Now is the time for the financial services industry to step off the sidelines and take a stand,’’ said Jonas Kron, director of shareholder advocacy at Trillium Asset Management, which focuses on sustainable investments.
Gun sales and gun stocks have tumbled since Donald Trump rose to the presidency. Until now, the thinking among investors has been that his administration, unlike the previous one, would be unlikely to push for stricter gun controls given its support from the NRA.
Some major endowments, such as the $10 billion University of California fund, sold gun stocks after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
On Thursday, the First National Bank of Omaha said it wouldn’t renew its contract with the National Rifle Associated for a branded credit card, because of “customer feedback.’’ Delta and United airlines became the latest in a string of companies to announce that they would end discount partnerships with the NRA.
On Saturday, the NRA said it had ‘‘nothing at all to do with the failure of that school’s security preparedness . . . or the cruel failures of both federal and local law enforcement.’’
The NRA statement called the companies’ moves a ‘‘shameful display of political and civic cowardice.’’
More institutions, including pension funds and municipalities, are demanding that their portfolios exclude companies that make guns and other weapons.
Many of the pension funds, such as the giant CalSTRS, represent one of the groups most affected by school shootings: teachers.
Pension funds managed for public school teachers in at least a dozen states, including Florida, New York, and California, own stocks issued by the makers of firearms or ammunition.
More than $845 billion of US institutional assets restricted investments were in weapons as of the start of 2016, according to data from US SIF, the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment. That number soared more than 1,000 percent after the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012, from $74 billion at the start of 2012.
Rommel Dionisio, managing director of research at Aegis Capital Corp., said that given the outcry over the latest shooting, “it would certainly not surprise me to see other state funds divest their investment holdings in the industry.’’
That might not depress gun stocks because other investors will probably still be willing to buy them, but activists say it could help build sway the view of more Americans against companies that refuse to stop selling military-style rifles to civilains.
Some investors are trying to exert pressure from within. Shareholders have filed at least three proposals at sellers or makers of guns in the current proxy season.
The proposals ask American Outdoor Brands; Dick’s Sporting Goods; and Sturm Ruger to report on steps they’re taking to improve gun safety and to mitigate the harm associated with gun products.
The proposals were filed by religious groups affiliated with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, whose members includes 300 institutional investors that manage $400 billion in assets.
Some institutions such as BlackRock, which manages $6.3 trillion, are privately contacting gun companies to make their case.
“Given our inability to sell shares of a company in an index, even if we disagree with management, we focus on engaging with the company and understanding how they are responding to society’s expectations of them,’’ said BlackRock spokesman Ed Sweeney.
BlackRock manages more than $200 billion of assets that are screened for weapons ownership and other value-based issues, and Sweeney said the company works with clients who want to exclude weapons makers from their portfolios.
BlackRock is largest holder of the three companies where the stockholder proposals have been filed: Dick’s Sporting goods, with 8.4 percent; Sturm Ruger, with almost 17 percent; and American Outdoor Brands, with 11.11 percent.
At each of the three, whose market capitalization is relatively small, anywhere from a quarter to nearly half of shares are owned by a handful of large institutions that, like BlackRock, generally track market indexes.
The Florida Education Association urged the state board that controls the pensions to sell its American Outdoor stock as well as that of other gun companies.
