Visa and Mastercard Drop Plans to Track Gun Purchases

Visa and Mastercard have halted their plans to use a new merchant code to track gun purchases.

WAFB reported that Visa and Mastercard’s pivot is “a significant win for conservative groups and Second Amendment advocates who felt that tracking gun shop purchases would inadvertently discriminate against legal firearm purchases.”

West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore reacted to the news by tweeting:

Discover card plans to begin tracking gun and ammunition purchases in April, Breitbart News reported March 2.

Reuters pointed out that Discover Financial Services was ahead of Visa and Mastercard in February 2023, noting that Discover would “allow its network to track purchases at gun retailers come April, making it the first among its peers to publicly give a date for moving ahead with the initiative, which is aimed at helping authorities probe gun-related crimes.”

The code for tracking gun purchases was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in September 2022, and an ISO representative indicated, “The decision to use the new merchant category code is eventually left up to the users in the industry.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News 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 and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.