Note: Mozilla says that they are getting “alarmed” phone calls and this post is causing people to become worried that there has been some kind of shooting incident at the company. So just to be clear, this is satire.
This morning, a number of gun-owning and gun-sympathizing Mozilla employees took to Twitter with a united, nearly simultaneous message to new Mozilla Corporation CEO Brendan Eich, who favors gun control: “Step down.”
The internal response began this morning with two tweets from Mozilla Open Badges project lead Chris McAvoy. “I love @mozilla but I’m disappointed this week,” McAvoy said, referring to the controversial decision to appoint Eich as CEO after it was revealed he had donated $1,000 six years ago to the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.
“@mozilla stands for openness and tolerance for all, but is acting in the opposite way.” He then made a more pronounced declaration: “I strongly believe in the second amendment and as an employee of @mozilla and I’m asking @brendaneich to step down as CEO.”
Within minutes, many other Mozilla employees followed suit, using similar language or copying each other’s statements outright. Those included Mozilla Festival curator Chloe Vareldi, partnerships lead John Bevan, designer Jessica Klein, and engagement team member Sydney Moyer.
McAvoy added that he feels fortunate to work at a company like Mozilla, “where now, at least, I feel safe speaking out about my gun rights and bringing my concealed gun to work so that I can protect myself.”
Other employees demanded Eich apologize for his support of gun control: “Pressuring him until he finally apologizes properly, which I hope is the end of this, is reasonable. He deserves every bit of condemnation he is receiving. He hurt people. Why shouldn’t he be held accountable?”
““I was wrong to support gun control, and I no longer oppose the NRA.” Until an apology includes that sentence or words to that effect, it’s not an apology for his actual offense.”
He added “It wasn’t evil when we shamed the racists out of the public square. It isn’t evil to treat the anti-gun bigots the same way.”
Neither McAvoy nor the other quoted employees mentioned Eich’s statement this week expressing sorrow for those he’s hurt. All of them expressed surprise to learn that the definition of “tolerance” includes “the willingness to tolerate something, particularly opinions or behavior that one does not agree with.”
Uncrunched 
Whatever was in 2008 a legal, and serious question about society, for which opinion is not only possible but asked for (people had to vote for it) becomes for a certain crowd a moral crime.
That is to say that the rights of the entire society has to give way to whatever subject any random minority comes up with, even if the attacked thing is called ‘democracy’.
Good luck with that
And the whole thing is just a pre-condition for software development.
Of course.
Mike this is the most spot on analysis of the situation I have seen. You have nailed this. “Intolerance” seems only to apply to certain people these days.
Yes, we are intolerant of hate. Gather your self-righteous mob and behave accordingly.
but you’re just labeling this hate so you feel justified in being intolerant of it.
I’m labeling it hate? Or is it the definition of hate? Suddenly we’re in a world devoid of adjectives, or moral compasses? Even Libertarian is a label and likes to label things like regulation as bad…just so they can fell justified in being intolerant of them?
yes, you’re labeling his actions hate.
Wow, that is a lot of responsibility for one guy. To create a label for another persons actions out of thin air. Solely without input from society, history or my fellow human beings sense of basic morality. I don’t know if I can handle it, I hope history judges me kindly.
and by calling it hate you are able to shut down any discussion. Just like the religious right does when people talk about gay rights and other issues. I don’t see much difference, just more intolerance.
New item on due diligence list for CEO hires: list all political contributions you’ve ever made.
Because owning a gun is the same as being denied the right that others get to enjoy. Eich leaving Mozilla is a huge tragedy and giant loss for the Mozilla community, but your logic here seems poor and emotionally charged. Given the earlier uproar Eich should never have been CEO and he shouldn’t be surprised at what has transpired. Deleting his twitter account betrays a naivitity in how his actions are perceived, he’s just not CEO material, although I’ll miss his comments on the mozilla mailing lists and am sad things went the way they did.
Oh please. Some of the same tactics, emotions and consumer activating techniques Mozilla used to launch FireFox and MS/IE got used against them. Life goes on. It’s not like he was taken to a re-education camp or dragged out back and shot. And it is certainly not like he was tied to a fence post and beaten to death.
He can still donate to his cause, and thanks to the latest $upreme Court decision he can give even more. He can still speak up in support of his hateful agenda and considering his wealth and the current state campaign finance he can speak louder and to bigger audience than your average person. Suck it up and move on.
Our society has officially entered the twilight zone. We either have the right to exercise our thoughts freely or we don’t. At this rate, we all might as well stop in our tracks for fear of alienating one group of people or another.
I’m a pro-gun-rights guy but that’s not the issue…the incredibly thin-skin our society now wears is.
I see what you did there! But I don’t think the logic is sound. You can be anti or pro gun control without being cruel to people for the way they were born. A much closer comparison would be if your headline ran “Minority Mozilla employees ask racist CEO to step down”.
I don’t think you should be cruel to people, period, particularly for believing a certain way.
So you can be cruel by being a bigot but you can’t be cruel for calling out a bigot?
I said the opposite. Why twist my words like that? And I’ve had very emotional arguments with people, including family members, who were against gay marriage in the past. It just never would have occurred to me do do anything beyond try to convince them to change their mind, like get them fired from their job.
Context. Your family is one thing but being the face and spokesperson for an organization is another. Would you have felt the same way if he support a return to segregation? Or espoused a belief in eugenics? Just anything goes, right. It is not different than being fired for being bad at your job. Part of his job was to be the face and leader of a group. A group that severally disagreed with his personal opinions. And those two things do not go together. Same a higher a CSS frontend designer for to do Rlang work. He and the board should have known better. The fact that is stance if rooted in hate and bigotry is almost immaterial to point that a blind person could see that is was a bad move. He could have stayed in a slightly lesser role and continued to lead if that is what he really wanted serve Mozilla. Did he and the ot hers really think it wouldn’t matter? Really? But instead he stepped into the limelight and the social markets reacted. Yea…social market forces. Same as free market forces. Welcome to the game.
what if he was pro-life, or pro-NRA? Would it be ok to fire him for that, too?
“like get them fired from their job.”
No one got fired. Eich RESIGNED. A very impressive action, in my view, that more than makes-up for his support of an ugly, divisive, arrogant, hate-driven, political campaign driven entirely by the religious right (Mormons). Mormons have since publicly apologized for the campaign.
How would you feel about a family member who was racist versus one who was pro-gun? What about a vendor or a manager?
Being pro- or anti-NRA doesn’t involve campaigning to treat a group of people as second-class citizens. Sorry, it’s hard for me to be tolerant of that.
And yet, your group fights for Muslims in the Middle East who murder homosexuals. See the irony?
A thought-provoking analogy. However, for balance, let’s consider another one:
“MAJOR BLOGGER CALLS FOR TOLERANCE FOR CEO’S NAMBLA DONATIONS”
Well-known blogger Anne Y Mouse called today for tolerance towards Acme Corporation’s new CEO after his $1000 donation to NAMBLA was revealed. “I’m opposed to NAMBLA. But often one’s opinion on issues like this are just a reflection of the environment they grew up in. I’m not about to demonize people for exercising their constitutional right to argue their point of view. We have freedom of thought, and we can believe as we see fit and we can support that belief in all sorts of legal ways. Personally, I celebrate that right… whether I agree with someone or not.”
… yeah, I don’t think so.
Now, I don’t know where you personally put religious supremacism on the sliding scale of evil, but I’d rate it somewhere in the middle – 550 milliNAMBLAs, one might say. 🙂
Gun control’s down the low end, perhaps only 100 milliNAMBLAs – the intent is entirely reasonable, mind you, but that doesn’t justify trying to do an end run around your constitution. (The goal should be to repeal the Second Amendment, not to violate it.)
Note the absolutely critical distinction between saying “Only marriage between a man and a woman is real” (whatever “real” may mean to you in this context) and saying “Only marriage between a man and a woman should be allowed.” The former is freedom of religion. The latter is religious supremacism, not to mention outright cruelty.