Brian Moynihan
Brian Moynihan, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America (AP Photo/Michael Probst)
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Brian Moynihan
Brian Moynihan, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

The ATF’s allegedly objective factors regarding pistol stabilizing braces isn’t the only government proposal that’s worthy of your attention. On the other side of the ledger, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is trying to stop the years-long trend of financial institutions — READ: too-big-to-fail banks and card processors — discriminating against firearm-related businesses. It’s an effective privatization of the Obama era Operation Choke Point program.

While the Trump administration ended the government-directed crackdown on gun makers, retailers and associated companies by denying them access to financial services, private firms such as Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Quickbooks, PayPal, Stripe and others have instituted their own anti-gun policies, refusing to do business with a company if, for instance, a gun maker produces or a retailer sells AR-15 pattern rifles.

JP Morgan Chase
Bigstock

Now the OCC has a proposed rule that would ban that kind of discrimination among lawful, but politically disfavored businesses and the National Shooting Sports Foundation is asking for the public to comment and support the measure.

Here’s the NSSF’s press release . . .

The NSSF®, the firearm industry’s trade association, is urging the public to comment on a Proposed Rule that would bring back fair and equitable access to financial services provided by financial institutions for industries that have suffered politically-driven discrimination. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed the rule to ensure that decisions are made based on rigorous risk-based analyses, not the political whims of external advocacy groups seeking to make law through the policies of financial institutions.

The OCC has stated, “Nothing in the proposal would require a bank to offer a particular service; the proposal requires only that the financial services offered by a bank to some customers are offered on proportionally equal terms to all customers engaged in lawful activities.”

The firearm and ammunition industry strongly supports the OCC’s proposed rule. NSSF is urging individuals to comment, especially if they share the concern that financial institutions benefitting from taxpayer-subsidized insurances, like the FDIC, and bailouts are improperly and unlawfully discriminating against legal, but politically-disfavored, industries, including firearm and ammunition production and sales, as well as other industries including oil and gas, coal, animal agriculture and private prison industries.

The proposed rule provides the following requirements for large, national banks ($100 billion or more in total assets) to provide fair access:

  1. Make each financial service it offers available to all persons in the geographic market served by the covered bank on proportionally equal terms;
  2. Not deny any person a financial service the bank offers except to the extent justified by such person’s quantified and documented failure to meet quantitative, impartial risk-based standards established in advance by the covered bank;
  3. Not deny any person a financial service the bank offers when the effect of the denial is to prevent, limit, or otherwise disadvantage the person:

(i)            From entering or competing in a market or business segment; or

(ii)           In such a way that benefits another person or business activity in which the covered bank has a financial interest; and

  1. Not deny, in coordination with others, any person a financial service the bank offers.

The public can make their voices heard in the Federal Rule-making process. The deadline for comment submission is Jan. 4, 2021 and can be submitted by accessing this link.

Firearm and ammunition manufacturers, distributors and retailers are devoted to supporting programs that promote the safe, responsible, and legal use of their products. Providing financial products and services to the firearm and ammunition industry is fully compatible with Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) goals and policies increasingly implemented at financial institutions.

The firearm and ammunition industry is a legal, law-abiding and responsible partner with regulatory entities, law enforcement, and community groups. Our industry makes the exercise of the Second Amendment possible for over 100 million law abiding Americans. We produced $60 billion in total economic activity and employs roughly 151,000 people and support an additional 181,500 jobs in supplier and ancillary industries.

NSSF’s goal as an industry is to proactively promote Real Solutions for Safer Communities®.

Examples of such solutions include: Project ChildSafe®, Don’t Lie for the Other GuyTM, FixNICS®, Operation Secure Store®, and partnerships with American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs.

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33 COMMENTS

  1. I participated and if someone short on words and feels a little skittish about gov. forms you can copy and paste my sentiments. If jack booted thugs come to get you tell them Debbie W. said it…

    “Gun Control in any shape or form is rooted in racism and genocide. Therefore Gun Control is a racist and nazi based agenda. Need I say more?”

    • If you have not yet responded to the silly brace hoopla send the ATF sentiments. Do not procrastinate. Preaching to the choir on forums like this is no where near enough.

  2. The next Comptroller of the Currency can reverse this guidance at the stroke of a pen. The only way to stop the collusion is to have a large enough, and lasting enough majority in House and Senate to have the financial industry (banks) declared a “public accommodation”. Even the radical Dims won’t mess with that.

    • Great idea but good luck in making that happen. Due to the success of the left in masterminding and perpetrating election and voter fraud that will never happen especially since they will get away with it this past election also. They have been pulling it off successfully since Wild Bill was first elected. Unfortunately I don’t see a change.

      • “They have been pulling it off successfully since Wild Bill was first elected. ”

        We have two choices: defeat the Leftists; enable uninterruptible single-party rule.

        • YES .. YES … YES …. I said that already but we’re not going to defeat them by votes. We almost have one party running the country as it is and basically have to a detrimental extent since since Nixon. Just like Ted Cruz said in his initial speech when he was first elected when he stated he did not trust either party as they both are equally responsible for our current situation. Ted was 100% correct. Neither of these parties are anything like they were when I was born in 1961 and neither are really all that much different now.

          With the amount of sheep we have in the USA today there is no chance of reducing the numbers of the left by a hot civil war so don’t even think of that option. Trump himself has ruled out martial law to force election correction so there really isn’t many other options. What do you want to do, cast a spell on them or something? GOOD LUCK 👍

        • “What do you want to do, cast a spell on them or something?”

          “It is better to live on your feet, than die on your knees.”
          – – Treacherous Old Man (Catch 22)

  3. I thought Libertarians supported discrimination from private businesses? There are plenty of pro-discrimination comments on TTAG in the past.

    • These financial institutions use the government and the federal reserve making them public business.
      This is just a ploy by globalists to stop Americans from owning guns.
      1. bankrupt the gun companies.
      2. make it hard for citizens to buy firearms.
      3. control the ammo and reloading equipment.

      This is accomplished by creating “choke points”. Lawsuits, declining credit to small business and citizens(because guns), stopping imports of inexpensive firearms, controlling reloading supplies.

      • The things you say are the things I said months and years ago. However (L)ibertarians or (l)ibertarians believe that the government should not prevent Private Business from discriminating against anyone.

        They said we should start our own bank. Well I don’t have the money. However the rich libertarian atheist Joe Rogan, and people like him, have that kind of money. Perhaps they can start a Libertarian Bank???

        And other less wealthy Libertarians can also start donating to the cause.

      • Btw
        I thought this was settled law. After the Alabama versus NAACP case from the 1950s. The state government of Alabama tried to force banking institutions to discriminate against a civil rights organization. And also tried to force banks to hand over their customer lists.

        Perhaps Libertarians agree with the state government of Alabama?

        This is reminiscent of the Plessy V Ferguson case from the 1800s.

  4. If the government can force someone to rent to anyone with means to pay then how do banks get a pass discriminating against business they don’t Like?

    Imagine denying a black gun owner renting and telling him it’s because you know he has guns. They would stomp on you.
    So what happens when a black owned gun business or company is denied credit? Call it racist and watch them squirm.

    To stop this for good a gender or racial component is needed. As long as it’s old fat white guys being excluded it’s going to continue. Remember alinsky rules and force them to abide by their own.

    • “If the government can force someone to rent to anyone with means to pay then how do banks get a pass discriminating against business they don’t Like?”

      Lawyers can verify/deny, but it may spin on whether banking/financial activities are a “public accommodation”.

      • Banks already have to abide by a boatload of fair lending laws already. If you are an aggrieved class member they shake your hand and say yes

        • “Banks already have to abide by a boatload of fair lending laws already.”

          Not seeing anyone suing against business line discrimination under those regulations.

    • Libertarians have totally supported racial discrimination. You can watch everyone’s favorite Libertarian, John Stossel, say it himself, on his Fox Business show. Which is no longer on Fox.

  5. Comments is why people that own guns and republicans get nothing done! All they do is talk! It’s time to start doing! The democrats do and they get bills passed and antifa and blm get what they want cause they do! Right or wrong they do and get it done unlike potg and republicans!

  6. Operation choke point went after porn as well as guns, and these “private” banks have been following suit. Pornhub was just forced by financial institutions to purge itself of a number of fetish videos despite documentation of ages, and of consent. These financial institutions are attacking the first amendment as eagerly as the second.

      • Libertarians are lunatics. Their only success is running interference for the Democrats. None of them can agree on the first and second amendments but almost support unchecked immigration and open borders. Absolute goofballs.

  7. Well according to Libertarians, its ok if private companies just volunteer to help the government. Instead of being forced to by law.

    “Signs Suggest Walmart to Turn Over Customer 4473 Gun Records to ATF”

    https://www.ammoland.com/2020/12/signs-suggest-walmart-turn-over-customers-4473-gun-records-atf/#axzz6hSykimrO

    I have never purchased a gun from any big box store. And I never would. This is a morality issue, and large companies have no morality.

  8. I think the last gunm I purchased from Walmart was in 1988, I’ve not bought anything using an ffl dealer since 1994, thank you Bill Clinton what a good teacher you were.

  9. Some of the uninformed comments among these posts border on the abusive. The truth of the matter is they are abusing themselves and others by spewing their hateful rhetoric with no goal or point in mind other than self-aggrandizement.

    The fundamental TRUTH about the 2nd Amendment is “self-defense” … without argument or limitation on form or scope that is not related to respect (tolerance) for the Rights of others. Other countries wish they had it. Our enemies wish we didn’t. Any reference to the “militia’ within it is an acknowledgement of the only organized “defense force” providing protection for the homes, villages and hamlets that comprised the communities of colonial America: The militia known as “The Minutemen”.

    The reality of it always has been held as, and by Supreme Court decision continues to be, an Individual Right – one that does not depend on any other individual or organization for its existence. Our Right to the ability to provide an adequate defense of our lives, those of our loved ones and those of any innocent, defenseless persons for whom we wish to provide that defense, is inseparable from our Right to control our own lives and destinies.

    Thomas Jefferson listed them in the Declaration as our basic HUMAN Rights of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” describing their existence as a self-evident truth, and that all individuals were endowed by the Creator with these Rights at the moment of their individual creation (meaning conception).

    It follows that the endowment of those individual Rights is an “Act of God” conferred upon ALL individuals and is therefor beyond the ability of Man or the governments he establishes to revoke. Societies have established laws and punishments, however, for those individuals who have violated the basic Human Rights of another individual in the commission of Capital Crimes (murder, kidnapping, rape) and is the justification for the Death Penalty. Ex: If you take a life illegally, you suffer forfeit of your own.

    The Courts (branches of government at various levels) have denied that government can be held liable (responsible) for failure to provide government services (police protection, fire protection, etc.) to any individual – only to society as a whole. So if you hear someone say, “It’s up to the police to protect me” … they are lying to you and themselves.

    In Warren v District of Columbia – 444 A 2d, 1 (DC Appl., 1981) it was decided, AND affirmed lower Court decisions, that “… it is a fundamental principle of American Law” that no federal, state, or local jurisdiction (or subdivision thereof) may be held liable for failure to provide government services …”, as stated above. It is up to the individual to be his (her) own first line of protection, “… with police providing only an auxiliary general deterrent.”

    If government can (does and should) absolve itself of all responsibility to protect me or any other individual, then it cannot deny me the ability to provide for MY OWN defense … without denying me my Human Rights to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” (i.e.: denying me my Right to absolute control of my Life and destiny), which do not exist without my Right of self-defense.

    Thousands of years of recorded Human history transcending all cultures and civilizations have recognized the existence of the Right of Self-Defense.

  10. I stand in support of the OCC Rule to mandate that financial institutions benefitting from taxpayer-subsidized insurances, like the FDIC, and bailouts are improperly and unlawfully discriminating against legal, but politically-disfavored, industries, including firearm and ammunition production and sales, as well as other industries including oil and gas, coal, animal agriculture and private prison industries.

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