Did you hear the one about Mastercard, Visa, and American Express? It’s actually not funny.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, credit card companies are preparing to create special merchant codes for gun retailers, a victory for gun-control advocates and an ominous warning for Second Amendment purists who value their privacy.
Visa is the latest company to join the initiative.
“Following [International Organization for Standardization’s] decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” Visa said in a statement.
That’s a really boring way of saying they’ll comply, using the code to track gun purchases.
Merchant codes are simple four-digit numbers used to organize and identify the types of vendors card users are purchasing from: food, bars, bicycle shops —they can all have their own number. Gun shops used to be flagged as “specialty shops” but that won’t be the case now.
“Card networks and banks have been discussing ways to monitor gun sales off and on for years,” WSJ reports. “But gun-rights advocates have long resisted such efforts, saying they could unfairly prevent legal gun purchases.”
“It isn’t clear if or how information gleaned from the new code would be shared with law enforcement. One challenge for payments companies will be determining what kind of gun purchases would be deemed suspicious,” WSJ continues.
The fact that it “isn’t clear” how the information will be shared or what will be “suspicious” is a red flag —amorphous boundaries aren’t boundaries at all. Not clearly defining what this is will pave the way for rights and privacy abuses that can’t be challenged.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is sounding the alarm; he wrote a letter to the three companies.
“The big three credit card companies say they will start tracking gun purchases, making it easier to track gun owners – and to stop sales. Big threat to Second Amendment rights. I want to know from the corporations why they capitulated to the anti-2A lobby,” Hawley tweeted with a copy of his letter to the credit card giants.
“This new system is ripe for abuse and brings to mind similar policies of Big Tech companies and payment processors that have targeted law-abiding Americans for engaging in constitutionally protected activities. I urge you to immediately reverse course,” Hawley writes.
We couldn’t agree more with the Senator from Missouri.
