The International Standards Organization has agreed to a shady scheme meant to track gun owners. The ISO sets rules across the financial services industry and their decision to create a new “merchant category code” for gun and ammunition retailers “cleared the way for a new means of tracking firearm and ammunition purchases.”
Track gun owners
The Second Amendment makes it illegal to track legitimate gun owners but the credit card vultures managed to pull it off. They cooked up a stunt, internationally, which is clearly unconstitutional in the United States. Progressive gun-grabbing supporters are thrilled, thinking it will “help flag suspicious sales and reduce gun crime.”
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have them. That makes crime go up. Gun sales are even more suspicious when they go down in Tyrone’s basement. Those transactions don’t get processed through MasterCard.
The International Standards Organization announced the decision on Friday, September 9, at their weekly meeting. The credit card companies have been hounded by liberals incessantly to track gun owners, legal or not.
This quote from Amalgamated Bank's CEO makes no sense at all. How is a merchant code going to help anyone determine if a sale at a gun store was illegal? This is the activist bank that requested the code, & even they don't seem to have a real plan for it. https://t.co/FdItAfjGiJ pic.twitter.com/kk9riDtXdk
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) September 9, 2022
“The decision came amid mounting pressure on credit card companies by Democrats in Congress who urged the code’s creation.” The way the system works, merchant category codes are “made up of four digits and are used across all sorts of industries as a means to classify retailers, while not revealing individual product purchases.”
Right now, credit card accounting lumps firearm retailers in with other outlets, “classifying them as either ‘5999: Miscellaneous retail stores‘ or 5941: Sporting Goods Stores.‘” Nobody can track whether you got a tent, a parka, or a shotgun.
If all gun and ammo sales went under the same code, “potentially suspicious purchasing patterns could be flagged to law enforcement — much the same way banks and credit unions made more than 1.4 million suspicious activity reports in 2021 for other types of transactions that might suggest anything from identity theft to terrorist financing.” Like that whole stack of SAR reports filed on Hunter Biden that the Treasury Department won’t turn over to Republican Senators.
Useful but unconstitutional
Supporters of gun track codes are convinced it would be a “useful tool to help law enforcement identify bad actors, pointing to a number of notorious mass shootings that were financed with credit cards.” That Colorado movie theater was shot up on credit in 2012. The suspect “charged more than $9,000 worth of guns, ammunition and tactical gear in the two months leading up to his attack.”
The Pulse Nightclub massacre left a $26,000 card balance behind. Then, there’s Stephen Paddock, who’s motive was chemical sensitivity (which the FBI doesn’t want you to know about). Not only did he get the record score for body count, he “charged almost $95,000 on dozens of guns.” The credit card companies didn’t stop that one but his doctors could have, and didn’t.
Initially, MasterCard, American Express and Visa all “resisted the creation of a merchant category code for gun and ammunition retailers.” The Democrats kept harping on them until they gave in to the gun track bullying.
Visa was especially nervous, noting they “believe that asking payment networks to serve as a moral authority by deciding which legal goods can or cannot be purchased sets a dangerous precedent.”
Mastercard can’t wait to start the track and grab process. They “now turn our focus to how it will be implemented by merchants and their banks.”
Priscilla Sims Brown, President and CEO of Amalgamated Bank explains, “the new code will allow us to fully comply with our duty to report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales to authorities without blocking or impeding legal gun sales. This action answers the call of millions of Americans who want safety from gun violence and we are proud to have led the broad coalition of advocates, shareholders, and elected officials that achieved this historic outcome.” From now on, be sure to pay cash.