The pushback against Amalgamated Bank CEO Priscilla Sims Brown’s plan began almost as soon as she started to seriously push for a new merchant category code for gun retailer transactions. And when she finally managed to mau-mau the International Standards Organization into approving her gun purchase tracking tool, parties like the NSSF, various state Attorneys General, along with state and federal legislators kicked into high gear.
Brown and the credit card companies said it was all part of wanting to monitor “suspicious activity.” The fact that use of the code would chill lawful gun sales while resulting in inaccurate Suspicious Activity Reports to federal regulators was just a price we’d all have to pay for more “safety.”
Today, however, Bloomberg (heh) reports that the all of the heat and political pressure applied to the credit card companies is paying off.
Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. have decided to pause implementing a plan that activists had hoped would track firearm sales and help curve gun violence.
The payment giants – along with Discover Financial Services – are delaying the work after a series of bills in the state legislatures targeted the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant category code. The MCC was created to be used when processing transactions for gun and ammunition stores.
It seems the credit card companies didn’t relish the prospect of new state and federal legislation impinging on their business practices as a result of the targeting of gun buyers.
“There are bills advancing in serval states related to the use of this new code,” a spokesman for Mastercard said in a statement Thursday. If passed, the proposals would create an “inconsistency” in how the code is applied by merchants and others, he said. “It’s for that reason that we have decided to pause work on the implementation of the firearms-specific MCC.”
Uh huh. It’s all just a technical mess. And then there are those unfortunate “inconsistencies.”
To hear them tell it, the “pause” in implementation has nothing at all to do with a group of red state Attorneys General demanding the companies nuke the new code. Never mind the bills already introduced in a handful of states (so far) and the US House that would prohibit use of the new code.
Visa also took a pause because of the “significant confusion and legal uncertainty” the legislative proposals have created, according to a spokesman. …
In a statement, Discover said it’s removing the MCC as well, “to continue alignment and interoperability with the industry.”
Translation: the whole idea of sucking up to the anti-gun left by tracking and reporting “suspicious” gun purchases — while violating individuals’ privacy rights — became too hot, too politically risky, and possibly very costly.
We talked to Montana AG Austin Knudsen today. He attributes the companies’ about face (at least for now) to a combination of the pressure brought by the AGs and the bills now pending in state legislatures and the US House.
Knudsen tells TTAG he’s expressed his displeasure over gun transaction tracking in direct meetings with both Visa and Mastercard. A member of his staff has also met with Discover, which had gotten off to a running start using the new code. He says he’s sure he’s not the only AG to have applied that kind of direct pressure, either.
As you can imagine, the gun control industry isn’t happy about the news. But a line from the AGs’ missive to the credit card companies pegged the scheme for exactly what it is . . .
“Activists pressured the ISO to adopt this policy as a means of circumventing and undermining the American legislative process. The new merchant category code will chill the exercise of a constitutional right without any concomitant benefit.”
Exactly. It was always a way of privatizing gun control through the tracking, reporting, and harassment of lawful gun owners in ways the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex knows they can’t get done through Congress…much the same as they’ve tried to do by pressuring shipping companies to harass FFLs, parts retailers, and manufacturers.
Same as it ever was.