Banks, Credit Cards Exploring Ways to Track Customers’ Gun Purchases

Banks and credit card companies are exploring ways to detect when their customers are purchasing firearms and/or firearm accessories.

The Wall Street Journal references sources who suggest “financial companies have explored creating a new credit-card code for firearms dealers, similar to how they code restaurants, or department stores.” Those sources believe that efforts to detect gun purchases “could be a prelude to restricting such transactions.”

Another option would be the opportunity for banks and credit card companies to began compiling a list highlighting the types of guns Americans are purchasing and the frequency at which those purchases are occurring.

Access to such data could also “allow banks to restrict purchases at certain businesses.”

Corporate gun control emerged as a new battleground against the Second Amendment in the days and weeks following the Parkland school shooting. It begin with a campaign against the NRA, wherein companies were pressured to cease offering discount rates to the NRA’s five million members.

On February 24, just ten days after the Parkland shooting, Breitbart News reported that over a dozen companies had cut ties with the NRA. Those companies include:

• First National Bank of Omaha
• Enterprise Rent-A-Car
• Symantec
• Metlife
• Delta Airlines
• United
• Best Western
• Alamo Rent a Car
• Avis
• Allied Van Lines
• Budget
• Chubb Insurance
• Hertz
• North American Van Lines
• Paramount Rx

Additionally, Citibank and Bank of America put new regulations in place for customers who work in the gun industry.

For example, on March 22 Citibank published new guidelines requiring customers owning gun stores to stop selling “high capacity” magazines, to raise the minimum age for long gun purchases to 21, and to exceed federal requirements in the administration of background checks. Bank of America announced it would cease lending money to companies that make “military-style firearms for civilians.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.