Blog 9/23/22

Weekly Spotlight 9/18-9/24/22


Major Credit Card Companies Take Aim at Americans’ Natural-Born Right to Self-Defense

There is significant pressure being put on the private sector by anti-gun lawmakers to regulate guns out of existence, and the financial industry is unfortunately starting to cave.  Major credit card companies like Visa, American Express, and MasterCard announced plans to start tracking consumer ammunition and firearms purchases by implementing a new “Merchant Category Code” (MCC) for gun retailers.  This follows a disturbing decision by the International Organization for Standardization to approve this new merchant code.  This is not just an assault on Americans’ right to self-protection but also  on Americans’ privacy rights, and it could impact every American firearm owner.

The USCCA-FSL took a deep dive into what this code means for consumers and discovered the following intrusions:

❌ This new code would give Congress everything they need to implement a National Firearms Registry, illegally tracking you as a legal firearm owner.  The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is supposed to erase background check information within 24 hours in order to prevent the creation of exactly this type of national database of firearms owners. 

❌ This opens the door for red flag legislation.  Lawmakers are looking to push even further to begin tracking and flagging these sales. 

❌ Every American is afforded legal protections to their financial transaction privacy that the use of a new code for firearms and ammunition purchases would be in breach of.  In other words, this idea isn’t just bad policy, it could be illegal.

Bottom Line: Law-abiding gun owners shouldn’t be subjected to more intrusion into their lives or tracked simply by making a legal firearm purchase.

Thankfully, a number of elected leaders are speaking out against it.  In a letter to the CEOs of American Express, Mastercard, and Visa, 24 attorneys general make the argument that this new code won’t boost public safety, but will help create a list of gun buyers that could be misused?

Republican lawmakers in Congress are also sounding the alarm on this new code and objecting to these major credit card companies for their efforts to wrongfully track Americans’ firearm purchases, with House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Patrick McHenry (R-NC) sending a letter to Acting Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Director Himamauli Das requesting information on how FinCEN will utilize this new data from the firearm retailer MCC.

The USCCA-FSL has questions too: 

  • Who’s to say what legal firearm purchase is suspicious? 
  • What criteria will be used to flag these transactions? 

While we have more questions than answers on this disturbing new development, the USCCA-FSL will not stop advocating for all law-abiding Americans’ right to self-defense.  Stay updated with this issue and others by visiting our website and be sure to follow us  on Twitter and Facebook so you stay an informed gun owner.

OTHER NEWS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

Washington Examiner: GOP Attorneys General Demand Credit Card Companies Reverse New Gun Purchase Code

Almost two dozen Republican attorneys generals are pushing back on a plan by major credit card companies to add a new code to categorize firearm sales, claiming it would do more harm than good. The change in policy by Visa, Mastercard, and American Express was celebrated last week by gun control activists as a way to flag suspicious sales, but the attorneys general argue it misses the mark when it comes to public safety and targets gun owners, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. “Categorizing the constitutionally protected right to purchase firearms unfairly singles out law-abiding merchants and consumers alike,” the attorneys general from 23 states wrote in a letter to the credit card companies.

Fox News: NYC’s Gun-Free Zones Don’t ‘Make Sense’ With Experts Calling Strategy ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’

Law enforcement experts are raising their eyebrows over New York City’s “gun free zone” law, which established a perimeter lined with laminated signs prohibiting the public from carrying firearms within, as one longtime police executive said the new legislation doesn’t “make sense” and is “extremely confusing.” “I didn’t like the idea of setting up special zones where permitted gun carrier holders could not go,” said Terence Monahan, formerly the highest-ranking uniformed member of the New York Police Department. Monahan spent just months shy of 40 years with the NYPD before he retired as Chief of Department in 2021. He said when he first heard the news of the “gun-free zones,” it “didn’t make sense.”

Denver Gazette: Editorial: Gun Control Hits A Wall In Colorado

Gun-control measures enacted in Boulder County have been placed on hold by the federal courts; left in doubt by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and, as reported in The Gazette last week, stymied even more amid further court developments here in Colorado. All of which should prompt advocates of more restrictions on firearms to ponder shifting tack in the campaign to curb gun violence. If the courts are turning out to be no friends of more gun control, perhaps it’s time for policy makers to move beyond tilting at the Second Amendment. 

The Washington Times: The Left’s Anti-Gun Crusade

The people in woke corporate America are so stupid. What criminal is going to purchase a firearm with a credit card (at least, with one of their own)? As usual, they are obsessed with ideas that make them feel like they are doing something to solve a problem when they are not. The cynical ones are worse. They are looking for control over their political opponents.  Anti-gun groups and politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Mayor Eric Adams have been pushing methods of creating a registry of gun owners as a way to attack the legal gun industry when a firearm is used in a crime.