Gun Controllers Want Credit Card Companies to Monitor and Restrict Lawful Purchases

[Markinsa]

Gun Controllers Want Credit Card Companies to Monitor and Restrict Lawful Purchases

By Chris W. Cox | Friday, February 22, 2019

 

Gun controllers have become increasingly frustrated that their federal agenda has been repeatedly rejected by Americans through their elected representatives, leading them to seek to circumvent the legislative process and restrict gun rights by way of the private financial system. Their goal is to pressure financial services companies into either not doing business with the firearms industry and gun owners, or to comprehensively surveille their lawful activity.

 

This should be chilling to anyone who cherishes their privacy, not just law-abiding gun owners.

 

On December 24, the gun confiscation supporters at the New York Times ran a thinly-veiled advocacy piece by Andrew Ross Sorkin in the news section, titled, “Devastating Arsenals, Bought With Plastic and Nary a Red Flag.” The piece outlined how some of the perpetrators of high-profile mass murders had purchased firearms and ammunition in the same manner that many ordinary law-abiding Americans do; with credit cards.

 

The online edition of the piece carried the headline “How Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings,” suggesting that financial services companies were somehow complicit in violence by facilitating the exchange of lawful goods that were ultimately used for criminal purposes.

 

According to the misbranded op-ed, banks and other financial services companies are “uniquely positioned” to monitor gun owner purchasing habits. Under Sorkin’s preferred scenario, credit card companies would require retailers to tag firearms-related purchases with additional data that could be used by the credit card companies to compile information on gun owners. The surveillance data could then be used to flag suspicious purchases for law enforcement.

 

Moreover, the piece suggests that this data collection could be used to restrict certain types of lawful firearms transactions outright. Sorkin suggested,

Walmart and ****’s Sporting Goods this year announced that they would not sell firearms to anyone under 21. If banks chose to use the systems they already have in place, they might decide to monitor such customers, perhaps preventing them from buying multiple guns in a short period of time.

 

To their credit, when asked for comment by the Times’s advocate, the major financial transaction firms expressed a reluctance to violate the privacy of their law-abiding customers. A Visa spokesperson explained, “We do not believe Visa should be in the position of setting restrictions on the sale of lawful goods or services… Asking Visa or other payment networks to arbitrate what legal goods can be purchased sets a dangerous precedent.” A Mastercard spokesperson added that the transaction company values the privacy of their customers’ “own purchasing decisions.”

 

These responses are promising, but don’t expect anti-gun extremists to relent with their pressure.

 

The Sorkin article is simply part of a wider-ranging effort to attack firearms owners through the financial system. In April 2018, Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety expressed support for increased credit card company surveillance of firearms transactions. In fact, the anti-gun organization has developed “guidelines” for financial institutions doing business with the firearms industry. Under the guidelines, firearms manufacturers and retailers would be forced to adopt a host of gun control measures in order to do business with financial services providers.

 

The recent credit card proposals prompt important questions. Under what scenario would a gun owner’s purchases be flagged as “suspicious,” or be outright denied? Might the criteria be defined by anti-gun activists to include any volume of firearms-related goods they consider deviant? Gun owners routinely purchase large quantities of firearms products and ammunition for the same reason consumers buy anything in bulk; to save money.

 

Gun owners should also be aware that any increase in the information that financial services companies collect may wind up in the federal government’s hands. A June 2013 item in the Wall Street Journal reported that the National Security Agency was scooping up large quantities of data from credit card providers.

 

Even those who do not value our Right to Keep and Bear Arms, but do cherish other civil liberties should be concerned with such credit card transaction proposals. In early 2018, when some of these ideas were first floated, Georgetown University Law Professor Adam Levitin pointed out, “There’s a privacy angle here… There’s the slippery slope danger if it’s guns today maybe it is pornography tomorrow and the day after it’s right-wing literature.”

 

New rules or surveillance procedures imposed by the credit card industry on firearms transactions would have a profound, negative effect on gun owners and the firearms industry, and pose a broader threat to all liberty-minded Americans. NRA will continue to monitor these efforts and keep our members apprised of any further developments.

[nstoolman1]

IF IT IS A LAWFUL PURCHASE

WHY SHOULD IT BE MONITORED????

[Karsten]

Remember during the Last Administration there was operation Choke Point or something like that where they were suggesting in a rather Matter of Fact Sorta way that Banks stop dealing with anyone connected to Firearms, From Manufactures to the local Gun Stores to run them out of Business.

 

This threat of Monitoring Purchases is just that....Scare tactic to detour people from Lawfully Buying a Firearms and the Use of Credit for the same.

 

Just withdraw the money from the bank and pay with Cash or by Personal Check.  

 

I am sure now with the Court Siding against Remington over the Sandy Hook Shooting that things are going to get tougher here in the near Future.

 

Karsten

[Markinsa]

8 minutes ago, Karsten said:

Remember during the Last Administration there was operation Choke Point or something like that where they were suggesting in a rather Matter of Fact Sorta way that Banks stop dealing with anyone connected to Firearms, From Manufactures to the local Gun Stores to run them out of Business

 

They talk about OCP in this thread:

 

I don' think these people realize that if they run the Arms and Ammo Companies out of business we won't be able to defend ourselves nationally.  Who is going to provide the firearms and ammo to our troops?

.

 

 

[Indraman]

We are heading down a very scary path...the LEFT pushing social justice ideologies through Big Tech Censorship and Association.

 

Indy

[Karsten]

39 minutes ago, Markinsa said:

 

They talk about OCP in this thread:

 

I don' think these people realize that if they run the Arms and Ammo Companies out of business we won't be able to defend ourselves nationally.  Who is going to provide the firearms and ammo to our troops?

.

 

 

 

 

Mark, I don't preach gloom and Doom but I will say I saw what happened to Firearms prices and the Ammo Shortage 1st hand starting the day "o" have elected.

 

I heard it from a very good source that trunk loads of Ammo was being loaded and shipped to an old Military base in the Western Utah Desert and Burned.....hence the shortages. The Post Office got their Ammo, IRS did the Same along with a couple other Gov Groups that really had no use for bulk ammo.........We the People where the ones getting the short end of the stick, going without or paying huge amounts for a limited amount.

 

Buy what you can now and put it away......Pick up[ a good quality AR platform and Magazines........You need the Mags to feed the guns. The mags are what they will go after 1st. I start my mag collection during the AWB of the clinton years picking up USGI 20's and 30 rounder where I could find them.....Long before Magplug and a few other companies got started.

 

They are butt ugly and little to no finish left but they all work and are loaded.....This was what I took out of my vest so i could clean the dust bunnies and spiders out the other day.

 

 

I have a couple tanker tool bags full of 20's and 30's loaded and put away.

 

Karsten

[8th ID]

I still buy ammo and mags....as much as I can. “Buy it cheap and stack it deep!”

[umbertino]

 

Interesting thread...Thanks Everybody

 

 

 

[bostonangler]

Hold me I'm scared!!!

 

More rhetoric to scare the masses.... Do you guys believe everything you read? Just because someone makes a suggestion, that doesn't mean it will happen...

 

BA

[nstoolman1]

Until you have lived in California and have an Att. General like Kamala Harris run your DoJ, and have a Legislature that will do anything to shut down your 2A rights 

you have no idea how scary it can be.

One morning you are Mr./Mrs. law abiding citizen.

Then with a vote, a stroke of a pen and overnight you are Mr. and Mrs. Felon.

Turn in you guns/magazines, register them or sell them out of state. 

Yes it is happening already. 

 

[Muleslayer]

On 3/16/2019 at 2:26 PM, Karsten said:

They are butt ugly and little to no finish left but they all work and are loaded.....This was what I took out of my vest so i could clean the dust bunnies and spiders out the other day.

are you not concerned about the spring not working properly after being compressed so long?

i use a rapid loader.

and the twenty or so Mag i keep loaded are always unloaded every few weeks at the range

 

[Markinsa]

11 hours ago, Muleslayer said:

are you not concerned about the spring not working properly after being compressed so long?

i use a rapid loader.

and the twenty or so Mag i keep loaded are always unloaded every few weeks at the range

 

 

Good point. I have about 7 magazines I had loaded about a year ago planning to go the range and didn't make it until recently. Almost every one jammed on me at least once....

[Karsten]

12 hours ago, Muleslayer said:

are you not concerned about the spring not working properly after being compressed so long?

i use a rapid loader.

and the twenty or so Mag i keep loaded are always unloaded every few weeks at the range

 

No, springs wear and loss power over the years from use....There have been magazine from WW@ that still work fine in both .45 ACP, .30 Carbine.

 

All my mags were cleaned, springs replaced and new followers back when I bought the.

 

Also don't load your 30 full...stop at 28.

 

Karsten

[Muleslayer]

thx for the tip!

did not know that one!

[psdon]

what I think is all the mass shooting's is brainwash people by a maybe i say China or Russa or N. Korea to get us
disarmed at home in case of a pending war (((  NO GUN'S ON THE MAN LAND  ))) maybe some lift people are

getting a paycheck from this? ***** PS that's a maybe****