American Express, Visa, and Mastercard have announced they will comply with a California law that requires the companies to begin using a merchant code specific to firearms and ammunition retailers.
Major credit card companies are moving to make a merchant code available for firearm and ammunition retailers in order to comply with a new California law that will allow banks to potentially track suspicious gun purchases and report them to law enforcement, CBS News has learned.
Retailers are assigned merchant codes based on the types of goods they sell, and the codes allow banks and credit card companies to detect purchase patterns. Currently gun shops are lumped in with other types of retailers, such as sporting goods stores.
Mastercard, Visa and American Express initially agreed to implement a standalone code for firearm sellers, but later paused their work on it after receiving blowback from Second Amendment advocates concerned tracking gun purchases would infringe on the rights of legal gun owners.
Like so many anti-Second Amendment laws, this one was passed by a legislature, most of whose members know nothing about firearms and have no idea as to the root causes of the criminal use of firearms and mass shootings; they are driven by the perceived need to "do something," which manifests with the decision, "This is something — let's do this!"
Gun control activists hope the code, approved by an international organization in 2022, can be used as a tool to help identify suspect purchases and, consequently, stop gun crime, including mass shootings. Proponents say a code for firearms merchants would allow banks and credit unions to alert law enforcement of potentially suspicious purchasing patterns in the same way they already flag other types of transactions, such as those that suggest identity theft or terrorist financing.
While a merchant code for standalone firearm and ammunition sellers would yield data that shows a transaction was made at a gun store, the credit card companies say the code would not provide details about the customer or insight into individual items that were purchased.
In other words, someone could walk into Cabela's, buy a thousand dollars worth of camouflage shirts and trousers, and be flagged as suspicious even though they never walked past the gun racks. The only way this could have any effect is if it tracked individual purchases, which would be an outright violation of the Fourth Amendment.
See Related: STRUCK DOWN! California Background Check for Ammo Purchase Violates 2nd Amendment
The very fact that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is supporting the implementation of this code system nationwide is evidence enough that it's a bad idea. The drafters of the California law, like Senator Warren, don't seem to understand that massive outdoor retailers like Bass Pro Shops, Cabela's, Sportsman's Warehouse and Scheel's exist, much less that they would have to be considered "gun stores" for this legislation to have any real meaning; and that a family doing non-gun Christmas shopping at any of those stores would likely trigger some investigation under this law — said investigation being, more than likely, shaky under the Fourth Amendment.
So again, from California, a law with no substance — a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
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