And just like that there is a new national gun registry, brought to the American people not by the government, but by Visa.
The Left has failed at passing a comprehensive gun control policy, but somehow their agenda slipped in through a back door that will affect Second Amendment rights.
Liberals have continually tried to expand background checks, ban so-called assault weapons, and limit magazine sizes, but they have not been able to make these agenda items into law. They seemed to have abandoned the national front and focused at the state level.
In Vermont, Republican Governor Phil Scott expanded background checks, increased the age limit for purchase to 21, and banned high-capacity magazines in 2018. This came as a response to the tragic Parkland shooting in Florida.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a new anti-gun bill into law before being elected to the Senate, and he increased the age to purchase firearms to 21.
But now the Left has a powerful ally. Visa, the world’s largest payment processing corporation, announced on Saturday that they will begin separately categorizing firearm purchases at gun stores.
Second Amendment advocacy organizations are criticizing the major credit-card companies over this plan to distinguish gun purchases in their payment processors. They believe this is the first step toward a database of U.S. gun owners.
The National Rifle Association called the action “a capitulation” to gun control groups.
“The ISO’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. This is not about tracking or prevention or any virtuous motivation – it’s about creating a national registry of gun owners,” NRA spokesman Lars Dalseide said.
Erich Pratt, the spokesman for Gun Owners of America, called the action by the financial institutions “the latest attempt by anti-gun lunatic activists to pressure corporations into collecting their own business partners’ data in a way that threatens their privacy, as well as the privacy of the millions of customers who rely on these services for electronic transactions each year.”
He predicted that the data would not stay in the hands of the credit card companies.
“Make no mistake, if the credit card companies were willing to so quickly cave on this demand, the mob will only demand more, leading us down a dark path where guns and ammo transactions, which are protected by the Second Amendment, are frequently halted and consistently flagged for the authorities,” he said.
The real fun begins when these purchases start affecting your access to credit https://t.co/zp9ocvqKhC
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) September 13, 2022