Radical liberals in state capitols, Congress and federal agencies want gun owner data and they seem hellbent on treating lawful firearms owners as truly second-class citizens to get it.
Before the decision was made this weekend for credit card companies to flag firearms purchases, liberals asked them to do it through “soft pressure” or social pressure in the form of a social media campaign.
First, two liberal anti-gun groups, Giffords and Guns Down America, along with Amalgamated Bank sent a letter to credit card companies, urging them to create a Merchant Category Code, also known as an MCC, to flag purchases from “standalone gun stores.”
That was soon followed by letters sent by the liberal activist Attorneys General Rob Bonta of California and Letitia James of New York, true archnemeses of gun owners … and the “MAGA Republican” crowd.
However, my favorite post on this topic over the past few weeks was one that came from none other than Massachusetts Democrat Senator and former 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.
This was quite rich, coming from someone that literally touted the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as a key element of why they should have been elected president of the United States in 2020; this is a gross double standard. The purpose of the CFPB is to literally ensure that Americans are “treated fairly by banks, lenders, and other financial institutions.” The mission of the agency is so clear and they are so proud of it that it is even written on its Twitter header.
What does it say when Warren, in particular, is asking financial institutions to target certain consumers and their transactions while in the past she has advocated for Americans to be treated fairly by these institutions and championed the creation of the CFPB?
In researching this topic, I spoke with Rachel Bovard, the Senior Director of Policy for the Conservative Partnership Institute. Rachel has over a decade of experience fighting for conservative policies in Washington and frequently writes on the topic of big tech and what the government can do about it as the senior tech columnist for The Federalist.
Bovard told me that Warren's push for this action was a confirmation of the fact that Warren only wants the “fair treatment” to be applied “in keeping with her own values.”
Although I connected with Bovard late last week before the decision from credit card companies was announced this past Saturday, she accurately predicted that the companies would cave to the “coordinated approach” of liberal activist groups and elected officials who surrendered to “political and social pressure” which worked even faster and more effectively than a government “mandate” would have.
Gun owners' worst fears of a national gun registry seem to be one step closer to being realized with the news announced last weekend that credit card companies would be tagging firearms purchases as a separate kind of transaction instead of just “sporting goods purchases” as they are most commonly classified.
The National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) wrote today that “If fully implemented by the various payment processors, the hope of gun control groups for this new MCC is that it would create a registry of gun owners that they have long sought and provide them with another tool to attack lawful industry when firearms are used in crime.
Several provisions in federal law, but most notably a key part of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, prohibit the federal government from centralizing most firearm records into a registry. The new MCC could provide a way for the government to outsource the creation of a registry that the government itself is prohibited from creating. If banks and payment processors share their records with the government, that would be a major step towards the registration of all gun owners in America.”
Many who urged the move, including Senator Warren, also are encouraging these companies to flag firearms purchases as “suspicious” to law enforcement agencies.
Notably, at least one major credit card company — VISA — has stepped up with a strong statement issued yesterday condemning activists asking them to flag fully lawful transactions.
VISA wrote the following in a statement, released last night:
“We do not believe private companies should serve as moral arbiters. Asking private companies to decide what legal products or services can or cannot be bought and from what store sets a dangerous precedent. Further, it would be an invasion of consumers' privacy for banks and payment networks to know each of our most personal purchasing habits. Visa is firmly against this.”
At the end of the statement, VISA also added the following:
“A fundamental principle for Visa is protecting all legal commerce throughout our network and around the world and upholding the privacy of cardholders who choose to use Visa. That has always been our commitment, and it will not change with ISO's decision. Our rules require financial institutions involved in transactions to evaluate and process all legal transactions. Our network does not allow any financial institution member to deny transactions for the purchase of legal goods or services based on which MCC they fall under.”
The MCC move was also blasted by several prominent gun advocacy groups.
National Rifle Association Spokesman Lars Dalseide said that “the (credit card industry's) decision to create a firearm-specific code is nothing more than a capitulation to anti-gun politicians and activists bent on eroding the rights of law-abiding Americans one transaction at a time.”
Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation told Breitbart that the move was “another attempt to disrupt and demonize people from buying firearms and ammunition by violating privacy rights and creating a database of gun owners. It is being done to hurt online sales. Guns.com and gunbroker.com and others are targets. The gun prohibition lobby wants to shut down all Internet sales even if the firearms have to be delivered from local dealers with background checks.”
In a day when banking is done online and e-commerce is ubiquitous globally, the lines between big banks, fintech, big tech and big data are getting blurrier and blurrier by the day.
Here's my thought: True data privacy, even if we do pretend that it existed at one point (before my time), does not exist today and it never will again. At the age of 25, I really don't remember a time before the internet. For the most part, I think data sharing has enabled markets to become freer and capitalist systems have created thousands if not millions of products and services that Americans use every day that depend upon data capturing, analyzing and sharing. For the most part, I think it is a good and fascinating thing. I am not a data scientist, but from a decade of working in grassroots politics, I can tell you from firsthand experience that in the campaign world, having access to extra data that your opponent does not often means the difference between winning and losing.
I also know that companies collect, store and sell this data because there is a huge monetary incentive for them to do it, and they can make millions selling it. There are thousands of companies that will buy the data and sell it to groups such as advertisers and political campaigns.
In a free-market system, I believe data should be fair game to be bought and sold.
But the big issue comes in when the government wants to play in the data marketplace as a private company does. That is what I have an issue with. Whether that was liberal governments tapping into location data services to send COVID exposure alerts during the pandemic, or some Republican states threatening to use location data to track activity at abortion clinics — I have a problem with it. Private companies (data brokers) shouldn't give the government access to data like this unless they get it through a means such as a congressional subpoena or if they want to use it in court cases. Other than that, they don't need it, and them having it could even be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, is one man who is in the fight to stop the government from being able to access this data in the same way that private companies do. He is the lead on a bipartisan bill with Democrat Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon to make “government agencies obtain a court order to access data from brokers. Court orders are already required when the government seeks analogous data from mobile providers and tech platforms,” as reported by TechCrunch.
If the credit card data tracking and potential reporting of it to law enforcement agencies doesn't scare you on its own, imagine if it was paired with another list that the government shouldn't have but does.
Earlier this year, Congressman Michael Cloud of Texas highlighted a disturbing discovery that the ATF is scanning data that come off 4473 forms that are filled out by licensed firearm dealers whenever they make a lawful sale.
Ammoland reported at the time:
“Congressional Representative Michael Cloud (R-TX) and 51 other Republican Congress members recently sent a letter (embedded below), to ATF questioning the Bureau's growing database of personal information about American's gun purchases.
“We are concerned that this Administration is leveraging its power in a way to establish a federal gun registry. Moreover, we are opposed to a recent (sic) proposed regulation that would require federal firearms licensees (FFLs) to facilitate the creation of a federal gun registry.”
According to a response letter (embedded below), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) acknowledged it has over 920 million firearms records, (920,664,765 records).
Additionally, almost 866 million of your personal firearms transaction records have been scanned and digitized out of the nearly one billion records.”
The data from those 4473 forms has all of a purchaser's info along with the kind of gun that they are buying. This data, along with data from credit card companies about firearms-related purchases that aren't limited to guns but also include things like ammunition, scopes, sights, lights, night vision goggles, etc. could give law enforcement agencies a much more detailed look at a gun owner's private data and flag law-abiding citizens as threats to society.
Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
The Second Amendment IS an essential liberty, enshrined within our Constitution, and gun owners must fight to make sure liberals don't get their way in their pursuit of a false sense of temporary safety.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Who’s going to let these b’tards of the hook after the war? Lots of trials and punishments after the war. Not so many of these stories after the war. Not so many of these b’tards either.
Should those left wing radicals actually get that bill made into a law it will spur a surge of cash sales for guns. The left and their stupid actions that are trying to control things they have no business doing, are going to push this country closer to that second American revolution that has been talked about for years now. When it happens it will destroy this country and the United States of America will cease to exist.
Does ANYONE pay attention to history??? Remember “Prohibition”??? In EVERY case of this type of governmental over reach throughout history, the net result is to drive it underground and CREATE a thriving black market with all attendant problems. The rise of the organized criminal activity historically noted as “the Chicago Mafia” was CREATED by the imposition of “prohibition” (of the sale, transport and use of alcohol) on the general public! American citizens do not like being spied upon, and these tactics will spur law abiding citizens to find creative ways to get around being tracked, just BECAUSE they are being tracked!!!
Wheres the 2A Groups Legal Units?? Merge on this issue alone
There is such a thing as gun violence. This is because the gun is weapon of violence, injury and death. But gun violence is not all evil: (1) Guns in defense of our nation. (2) Guns against evil-doers who would hurt me and my family. If these goons have their way, you cannot even procure a gun to protect your own family. And when the bad guys move in, by the time the police arrive, you and your family may well be DEAD.