On Saturday, Visa, the world’s largest payment processor, announced it would categorize sales at gun shops with a separate merchant code. Mastercard and American Express are doing likewise. Before this last weekend, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”
Gun control advocates argue that creating a separate category code for gun store purchases could curb gun violence. Unfortunately, this decision seems too vague to red-flag potential gun violence, and it reeks of corporate virtue signaling. For starters, merchant codes track where a consumer uses a credit card but doesn’t flag what specific items were purchased. A large gun safe could cost thousands and show up as a gun store purchase, but many legally abiding owners of rifles have such safes for proper gun storage. They’re not future mass shooters.
In an attempt to clarify the new rules, some financial institutions have muddied the waters.
“The new code will allow us to fully comply with our duty to report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales to authorities without blocking or impeding legal gun sales,” said Priscilla Sims Brown, president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank, in a press release Friday.
But neither the credit card companies nor the banks have specified what “suspicious” gun sales look like. There are more questions than answers at this point. The line between lawful and suspicious is thin sometimes. The National Rifle Association has balked at this move. Other conservatives worry it could lead to the creation of a national gun registry. Many argue this is a violation of our keystone right to bear arms.
The Uvalde school shooting incident was particularly brutal. It made law-abiding gun owners like myself ask more (and harder) questions about gun violence. The instinct to want to stop gun violence is something nearly all Americans share, political parties notwithstanding. But there’s so much more to gun violence than one or two gun or ammunition purchases.
This new decision credit card companies have made to flag gun store purchases under a separate code seems so vague that it’s hard to see what good can come of it. “At least they’re doing something” isn’t justifiable logic.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
