GOA, NRA, SAF: Credit Card Companies’ Shift Sets Stage for Gun Sale Data Collection

Gun Owners of America (GOA), the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), and the National Rifle Association (NRA) are warning that the credit card companies’ capitulation to Democrat pressure to recategorize gun purchases sets the state for gun sale data collection.

The Washington Times quoted GOA senior VP Erich Pratt suggesting the recategorization of gun sales is “the latest attempt by anti-gun lunatic activists to pressure corporations into collecting their own business partners’ data in a way that threatens their privacy, as well as the privacy of the millions of customers who rely on these services for electronic transactions each year.”

The NRA’s Lars Daleside said, “With a few keystrokes, this new code creates a list of people who purchased firearms, ammunition and firearm-related accessories – that’s the very definition of a registry. It’s an attempt to outsource the creation of a gun owner registry, something that the federal government is prohibited from doing.”

And SAF executive VP Alan Gottlieb described the recategorization efforts as “another attempt to disrupt and demonize people from buying firearms and ammunition by violating privacy rights and creating a database of gun owners.”

Gottlieb added, “It is being done to hurt online sales. Guns.com and gunbroker.com and others are targets. The gun prohibition lobby wants to shut down all Internet sales even if the firearms have to be delivered from local dealers with background checks.”

Breitbart News reported that Visa issued an announcement on September 10, 2022, that it would be recategorizing the way purchases from gun stores are labeled.

This announcement came after weeks of pressure from Gabby Giffords, her gun control group, Democrat lawmakers in New York, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) — all claiming that labeling gun purchases under categories such as sporting goods or general merchandise was not sufficient.

Hochul went so far as to contend that major credit card companies need to take action and “do their part” for gun control.

Writing in the New York Times’ Deal Book, Andrew Ross Sorkin, a proponent of recategorizing gun sales, suggested the new labels could be used by banks to halt payment on guns if banks so choose.

Sorkin suggested that “the payments industry needs to develop and refine software algorithms for identifying suspicious activity based on the merchant codes.”

He noted that once the algorithms have been developed, “Banks could then either allow those transactions, or block them and file suspicious activity reports with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which would ideally also create a system to quickly forward that information to local law enforcement and the F.B.I.”

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 PhD in Military History from Texas Tech University. His PhD is focused 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.