Congress Has Chance to End Threat of Gun Store Codes for Credit Cards

I’m kind of down on House Republicans at the moment, and I’d think that’s with good reason. I’m not ready to let them slide on any of that, nor the fact that numerous other pro-gun measures are languishing on a desk somewhere and not getting the votes they deserve.

However, there are some things that they might just be bothered to do, in part because they’re probably easier sells and not as high-profile.

One of those might just be banning the use of special Merchant Category Codes for gun stores.

Now there’s even greater momentum — and a more favorable political landscape — for the federal legislation in the same vein that would block activist banks and gun control allies from tracking and denying purchases at firearm retailers made by law-abiding Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights.

Fair winds at federal level

Legislation to prohibit the use of a firearm retailer-specific MCC code was first introduced during the 118th Congress (2023-2024) by then-House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-New York) and U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) in the Senate. However, even with a pro-Second Amendment majority in the lower chamber, the Senate was led by anti-gun Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), with President Joe Biden occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. There was little realistic chance for the bill to be enacted.

However, with the new 119th Congress, the winds have shifted considerably. Rep. Riley Moore (R-West Virginia) introduced H.R. 1181, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act, in the House of Representatives in February. That bill already has 118 co-sponsors. In the Upper Chamber across the Capitol, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) once again reintroduced his bill (S. 1715) and it already has 16 Senate cosponsors.

With President Donald Trump, who has vowed to protect Second Amendment rights, in the White House, the prospects have never been better for federal protections against this anti-privacy, anti-Second Amendment folly pushed by gun control activists and “woke” supporters in banking board rooms.

Now, the odds of this passing are still kind of slim.

Unless it’s part of a budget bill, the filibuster is still an option for Senate Democrats, who will most likely exercise it to stop this kind of thing. However, this is where the tactical side of politics might come in.

See, the anti-gun forces are fighting against things like the reduction in the tax stamp cost for suppressors by saying it’s been on the books for over 90 years, and we shouldn’t just upset the status quo like that, but a new Merchant Category Code for gun stores is a recent development. All anyone is talking about doing is maintaining the status quo, one that protects gun owner privacy.

Sure, the usual suspects will try to spin it as these codes being necessary for public safety, but the truth is that there’s no evidence of them doing anything at all. The initial proposal for them was that it would allow banks to look for suspicious purchasing patterns using financial tools that would warn of a mass shooting, but the dipstick who proposed that didn’t realize that mass killers don’t actually buy tons of guns and ammo before a killing spree, but gun nerds do.

This can and should happen.

If Republicans get off their keister and get this done, I might consider forgiving them for all the other stupidity they’ve exhibited on guns this year. 

Then again, I probably won’t. I just won’t be quite as angry as I am right now.