Operation Choke Point was an initiative started during the Obama administration ostensibly to stop fraud. That may have been the plan, but in practice the initiative was very successful in stopping lawful businesses such as gun stores and others the progressive movement found objectionable from getting commercial loans or opening bank accounts. News comes today that the Trump administration has finally released Obama’s chokehold on these funding streams, ending the program once and for all.
Bank loans are the life blood of American business. Without loans, such as working capital lines of credit, businesses would be unable to purchase the equipment and stock they need to expand and grow. Distributors have tried to fill the gap where they can, making payment terms more favorable for gun stores and giving them more time to pay, but financing operating costs and getting construction loans can still be difficult to obtain for these objectionable businesses.
Thankfully that should all change now.
From the Washington Examiner:
The Trump administration has ended Operation Choke Point, the anti-fraud initiative started under the Obama administration that many Republicans argued was used to target gun retailers and other businesses that Democrats found objectionable.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told GOP representatives in a Wednesday letter that the long-running program had ended, bringing a conclusion to a chapter in the Obama years that long provoked and angered conservatives who saw Choke Point as an extra-legal crackdown on politically disfavored groups.
“All of the department’s bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Chokepoint are now over, the initiative is no longer in effect, and it will not be undertaken again,” Boyd wrote in the letter.
This news comes after months of lawsuits and congressional lobbying by Republicans to roll back the Obama era scheme, one of many designed to use the government’s bureaucracy to enact regulations that the executive branch couldn’t get through congress.
Many others still remain, such as the mandatory reporting of multiple weapons sales in border states, and racial questions on ATF firearm purchase forms. Are these on the chopping block, too? Watch this space.