February 19, 2024
Major credit card companies such as American Express, Mastercard, and Visa recently implemented a special merchant code to track firearm and other firearm-related purchases taking place in California.
Per a CBS News report, this new merchant code will be used to stay in compliance with a “California law that will allow banks to potentially track suspicious gun purchases and report them to law enforcement.”
This move is not an isolated incident. Initially, leading credit card companies embraced to subsequently walk back from plans to use a new merchant code to track firearms and other purchases connected to firearms nationally.
These efforts by getting credit card companies to track gun sales have been several years in the making.
Back in September 2022, Visa originally folded to pressure from civilian disarmament organizations and New York Democrats by reaching an agreement to single out flag gun and ammunition purchases through the merchant code. The Associate Press also reported that Mastercard and other credit card heavyweights have agreed to single out firearm sales.
On March 2, 2023, Breitbart News published a report highlighting Discover was expected to start tracking firearm and ammunition purchases via the new merchant category code (MCC) in April 2023. At first glance, it looked like Gun Control Inc. was about to open up another avenue to regularly attack gun rights.
However, a week later, Mastercard and Visa changed their position and announced that they would not follow through with their plan of tracing ammunition and firearms purchases for the time being.
However, these new anti-gun schemes appear to be taking a local turn with credit card companies now planning to use a merchant code to track firearms and similar sales in order to stay in compliance with the newly passed law in California. According to a Washington Examiner report, the California law will go into effect in 2025.
North Carolina Congressman Richard Hudson — a seasoned champion of the Second Amendment — sounded off on the plan to trace firearm purchases, declaring, “Once again, credit card companies are attempting to track the information of lawful gun owners. This is yet another egregious ATTACK by the Far Left on Americans’ Second Amendment rights to bear arms.”
The cold hard truth is that California remains a trend setter for gun control and other freedom-destroying policies nationwide. It’s naive to treat the passage of any gun control law in California as some regional idiosyncrasy that’s just confined to the Golden State. Such legislation will invariably be passed in other blue states to later make its way to red states if gun owners slack off in terms of their vigilance.
In Texas, financial institutions were prohibited from using merchant codes to track the purchase of firearms, ammunition and firearms accessories thanks to the Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act (HB ) that was passed during the 2023 legislative session.
But before the legislature had an opportunity to act on this latest threat, Attorney General Ken Paxton has been resisting the “woke” corporations and their attempts to subvert traditional freedoms in the Lone Star State.
When this credit card company-led gun control push was first taking off, Paxton signed a multi-state letter spearheaded by Montana and Tennessee that was directed to the CEOs of American Express, Mastercard, and Visa.
Paxton and other attorneys general in red states were particularly concerned with Gun Control Inc.’s and the International Organization for Standardization scheme to target law-abiding gun owners by setting up a merchant category code to track purchases at gun stores.
Paxton’s office was particularly concerned with how the code was structured and its vague wording. It argued that this code did nothing to promote public safety. Instead, the AG’s office believed that this code was designed to gather data on millions of lawful Americans who carry out transactions at firearm stores and to even keep tabs on merchants. Essentially, it would function as a mass surveillance program that could result in the violation of millions of Americans’ privacy rights.
Moreover, Paxton’s office feared that this system could potentially infringe Americans’ constitutional freedoms such as “hacking this confidential information and misusing the data to punish law-abiding gun owners merely for exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.”
The letter signed by the red state attorneys general read as follows:
“As our respective States’ chief legal officers, we are tasked with protecting the constitutional rights of our citizens, defending our consumers from privacy intrusions and other abuses, and enforcing antitrust laws. Accordingly, we share our concerns and ask that you take immediate action to comport with our consumer protection laws and respect the constitutional rights of all Americans.”
It’s good to see Texas standing up against corporate gun control. Future leaders in the Lone Star State will continue to have to be aware of this issue because the gun control crowd does not rest plain and simple.
While it’s natural for gun owners to focus their attention on gun control coming from state actors, one cannot just ignore gun control schemes coming from the corporate sector.
Gun Control Inc. is relentless when it comes to how it advances gun control. When it gets shut out from the federal level and even some state legislatures, the gun controllers will then proceed to use private vehicles to push their freedom-destroying schemes.
To address these unique political challenges, tough legislative decisions will have to be made. This could entail the use of prudential state power to rein in corporations that lend their services to Gun Control Inc’s unholy agenda.
At this critical moment in American history, half-measures simply won’t cut it in containing the tyrannical Left.
