Via Chet, Richard, and other sources.
Interesting development. It’s another attempt at an end run around the 2nd Amendment:
Credit Card Code to Track Gun Sales Approved by Standards Group:
“I’m pleased that the ISO voted to advance a key step to prevent the next tragedy,” Lander said in a news release. “American Express, Mastercard, Visa and other credit card companies now have a responsibility to implement the new merchant category code, so that financial institutions can do their part to flag suspicious activity and save lives.”
Guns bought through credit cards in the US will now be trackable:
Credit card purchases of firearms in the US can now be tracked and purchases deemed suspicious can even be shared with law enforcement, according to a new measure approved by an organization that sets parameters for business transactions.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) voted in favor of creating a merchant code for firearms stores, according to Reuters.
Visa To Categorize Sales At Gun Stores In Win For Gun Control Advocates:
Visa’s decision will allow banks to make decisions with enhanced information on whether they will allow purchases at gun shops on their cards.
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx to start categorizing sales from gun shops:
Visa’s adoption is significant as the largest payment network, and with Mastercard and AmeEx, will likely put pressure on the banks as the card issuers to adopt the standard as well. Visa acts as a middleman between merchants and banks, and it will be up to banks to decide whether they will allow sales at gun stores to happen on their issued cards.
There were some attempts at balanced reporting. ABC and NBC had identical articles which included this:
Gun rights advocates argue that tracking sales at gun stores would unfairly target legal gun purchases, since merchant codes just track the type of merchant where the credit or debit card is used, not the actual items purchased. A sale of a gun safe, worth thousands of dollars and an item considered part of responsible gun ownership, could be seen as a just a large purchase at a gun shop.
“The (industry’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,” said Lars Dalseide, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.
Credit card firms to code gun, ammunition purchases, making them easier to track:
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, on Wednesday morning, also tweeted in support of an MCC.
“Together we can help stop gun trafficking & keep New Yorkers safe,” she posted.
Opponents of the measure included the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
In a statement to The Center Square, Mark Oliva, the organization’s managing director for public affairs, slammed the move, saying the creation of the code was “flawed on its premise. Those who believe it will help law enforcement do not provide details on what should be considered suspicious purchases.”
“This decision chills the free exercise of Constitutionally-protected rights and does nothing to assist law enforcement with crime prevention or holding criminals accountable,” he said. “The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics consistently shows in their own reporting that 90% of felons convicted of their crimes involving a firearm admit they illegally obtain those guns through theft or trading on the black market. Attaching codes specific to firearm and ammunition purchases casts a dark pall by gun control advocates who are only interested in disarming lawful gun owners.”
I have three takeaways:
- Continue using cash whenever I can (online is still going to be a card).
- Encourage others to use cash.
- Publicize and advocate boycotts for banks that refuse to let their cards be used for the exercise of 2nd Amendment rights.
Make this work both ways. They want to use it to cast a chilling effect on the exercise of constitutionally protected right. We can use it to out the enemies of the constitution and freedom. And by using cash you enable others to avoid paying our oppressors more tax money.
Update: This is a good article on the topic which includes more from the civil rights viewpoint.
Another thought. Why are American companies allowing themselves to be dictated to by an international organization in contravention of our laws. Rhetorical question. The answer is, of course, globalism.
Pay with Privacy.
https://privacy.com/join/D9B52
Privacy is a real bank which serves a couple of purposes. For this it serves as a firewall between your purchases and your bank. It works like this..
Privacy gives you a credit card number that you give to the merchant. That card number is locked to that merchant permanently and cannot be used by any other merchant. Each “card” you generate is a different number but is locked to the first merchant who charges to it. You can even use a fake name and a PO Box if you don’t want the merchant to know anything about you at all.
Privacy then debits your regular bank account and tells that bank whatever you want. Mine is H&H Hardware, but you can use “NSA Gift Shop” if you like. Or “Privacy.Com” You can set limits by total amount, by monthly amount, annual amount, or just make it a one time use only card.
How does this help you? Well you bank never knows what you’ve spent on what. Your merchant doesn’t have access to your real bank info. When (not if) your merchant gets hacked and your card stolen, Privacy rejects the transaction because it’s at a different merchant. When Surefire got hacked and my number got stolen, the thieves tried to buy a pizza with the number. Rejected. Then they tried something else. Rejected. I emailed Surefire’s customer service and about 2 weeks later got the “we’ve been hacked” email from Surefire. I may have been their first notification of the hack because of this feature.
I use Privacy with every online purchase. I use it for Netflix and other recurring bills. If I ever want to cancel Netflix, I just cancel the “card” they’re using. No matter how many times Netflix tries to use the card it won’t work. No more dealing with companies who “forget” to cancel your account.
Privacy is a real bank and therefore wants the standard “Know Your Customer” (KYC) info, so it’s not completely opaque to the government, but it at least throws a monkey wrench into this particular problem of your own bank selling you out for gun purchases.
Awesome! I just signed up. I then tried to order some Winchester Small Pistol primers but the order was declined. I suspect it was because the shipping address was different from the billing address. I’ll try again on something else another time.
Thanks.
It wasn’t the different shipping and billing addresses. I received two emails from Privacy.com. 1) Your new account is under review. This may take up to 48 hours. 2) Your transaction was declined because it was over your $500 weekly limit.
” I then tried to order some Winchester Small Pistol primers but the order was declined”
“Your transaction was declined because it was over your $500 weekly limit.”
I thought damn! Thats stocking up. Then I realized the inflation/gouge rate on primers!
I used to think of ISO as a technology standards organization not involved in politics. No more. What the f*** is wrong with the people running that shop? Did the mental defectives take over?
Cash is not the problem – it is peoples acceptance of all things for the common good as the guiding principle.
People and yes, even AI, are not infallible. Mistakes will be made which is why societies which have valued and encouraged individual achievements will be more successful. Such societies are Antifragile and have not put all their eggs in one basket.
Yet, today, we have immense pressure to force everyone to give up individual rights for the common good decided by faceless bureaucracies. And indeed it is reaching the point where civil war is no longer unthinkable.
The pandemic did show us an alternative – make the home the center of learning, work, and play. It is a win win. It was also what traditional life was all about. Today we focus on trying to make our mega cities livable – a hopeless and never ending task. Instead we should encourage the development of smaller communities.
Sean seems to have a good solution. And not sure how gift cards might be used?
So public employee and teacher pension funds are pushing the banks. How quaint.
The way I see it. If my bank won’t let me purchase guns and ammo with my card? They don’t want electricity anymore either.
Electricity is the lifeblood of the new world order. Without it they cannot enforce their edicts. And enforcement is the key to every tyranny. Big or small.
What was that old song; Turn out the lights, the parties over.
Just another one of many attempts at gun registration. Which is always a prelude to gun bans and confiscations.
The credit card companies can identify transactions at retailers that sell guns. They cannot identify is what I bought. Retailers consider that confidential information.
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There are very few businesses that deal exclusively in guns. Even Rural King Guns sells a variety of related products. So Big Gun Control gets a notification every time I buy something at Wal-Mart? So what?
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Even if retailers were to report what I bought, this would result in a firehose of data reporting billions of transactions. Who is going to store that much data. Who is going to process all that information?
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This is nothing more than the credit card companies signaling that they are responsible corporate citizens, excuse me, useful idiots. Since the governor of New York requested this information I would be quite happy to see the credit card companies sending daily terabyte sized reports to the State of New York.
“card companies sending daily terabyte sized reports”
That’s how you can hide in plain sight!
Swamping TPTB with lots of data used to be a viable endevour, back when storage was expensive, computers were expensive and not very powerful, and programing was also not cheap. Those factors have all changed. Now, nearly everything is stored for later crunching, if it’s not done on the fly.
A different strategy must be employed.
I routinely search through petabytes (maybe exabytes, I’m not sure) of data.
You’re right. I was thinking about a security briefing from long ago.
Are we destine to live in a fish bowl society where privacy laws are the only protection and even then what can be observed depends upon who they are?
Is this not the elephant in the room? Is our only solution to have the right people elected and to only promote the honest?
We should also consider the fact that they know everything, but to what conclusion?
That the firearms industry is a good investment? That the more ammo you make cheaper, the more they shoot?
With a 100 million gun owners/shooters, there’s a desperation in this act. It seems their thrashing around on this one.
So they start shutting off cards and pissing off millions of people with guns?
“When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”. That’s a two-way range they can only guess at the outcome.
And literally EVERTHING they need to live comes right through or originates from “Outlaw territory”?
It seems to me that any AI/computer program worth it’s salt would tell the WEF their f–k’in insane on this one.
It seems that Yuri stuff cuts both ways also.
Various fascist politicians have already made it very clear they consider this a new handy tool to put gun dealers out of business. No surprise; that has been their goal for many years now.
It’s looking more and more important to know how to make your own.