NYC Mayor and Officials Urge Credit Card Companies to Share Private Information to Track Gun Sales
There are two types of people who pay for guns using cash: people who don’t want their wife finding out about it, and people who don’t want the government knowing about it. While hiding a gun purchase from your wife is an idea with plenty of merit, hiding a gun sale by paying cash is bunk due to the fact you just filed an ATF Form 4473. Sure they don’t know the make and model until an ATF Compliance Agent takes photos of all of the paperwork, but you can’t hide a gun based on your form of payment.
While the ATF has lawful processes for doing gun traces, gun-control supporters are apparently willing to go so far as to violate your privacy to try and lock you up over lawful purchases.
“New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, trustees of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System and Board of Education Retirement System, and elected leaders today called on American Express, MasterCard and Visa, three of the world’s largest credit card companies, to support a proposal to establish a merchant category code (MCC) for gun and ammunition stores.”
-Press Release, NY City Hall
What is a Merchant Category Code? In a few words, it’s a code that stores and retailers get to help credit card security. Credit cards and banks use these codes to flag fraudulent purchases.
NYC officials are known for their disregard for the second amendment, and it’s no surprise that ordinary citizens and lawful gun owners are beginning to panic. It’s fair to say that virtually all gun owners who buy ammo in bulk do so to save money in the long-term, yet the gun-grabbing Left wrongly see people who poke holes in paper as a threat to society, and they’ve asked credit card companies to violate your privacy over it by pressuring these companies to create a specific MCC to target gun and ammo purchasers.
“The creation of a new code would help financial institutions detect and report suspicious activity, such as unusually large purchases of firearms or ammunition, or purchases from multiple stores, that may be used for criminal purposes,”
Merchant Category Codes are used internally by banks and transactions may not be disclosed without the account holder’s (your) permission without a warrant signed by a judge, as per the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution. As if unconstitutional “red-flag laws” weren’t enough, NYC Mayor Eric Adams pushed for these new codes to supposedly aid law enforcement.
“When you buy an airline ticket or pay for your groceries, your credit card company has a special code for those retailers. It’s just common sense that we have the same policies in place for gun and ammunition stores. I’m proud to join Comptroller Lander and our partners at the state level to call for this important policy change.”
-NYC Mayor Eric Adams
And there it is…”Common Sense.” The Left’s favorite phrase for taking your rights away.
Luckily, MasterCard spokesman Seth Eisman said, “the credit card giant is working with the International Organization on Standardization (ISO) on how to create the codes, which would appear on bank statements between Mastercard and its merchants. Mastercard wants to be sure it also protects cardholders’ privacy,” so at least the credit card companies are willing to say they will follow the rules.
Since the passing of the NY SAFE-Act into law in December of 2014, there have been repeated attempts by the New York State Legislature to limit how much ammo can be purchased by an individual, with commonly cited numbers of [paraphrased] “Twice the amount of a firearm’s capacity every 90 days.” Since NYS has a ten-round limit on all of their magazines, that would allow lawful gun owners to only buy 20 rounds of ammo every 90 days, or 80 rounds per year. Public outcry against this new push by NYC’s mayor is suggesting some to believe NYS is going to push for credit card companies to “red-flag” gun owners by flagging any credit card purchase of ammunition over their historically supported 20-round quantity limit theory.
We at GunCritic would love to hear what the rest of the gun community is saying about this. Join the discussion in the comments below….
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