Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
As we noted on Monday, credit card companies will start coding gun stores differently, ostensibly so they can track “suspicious” gun purchases.
Of course, no one has been able to describe what a suspicious gun purchase is as of yet, but they’re going to track it.
Now, the CEO of Amalgamated Bank claims this move “answers the call of millions.”
The president and CEO of the New York-based bank that pushed for a specific credit card code for gun retailers has claimed victory in the wake of the International Organization for Standardization’s approval of that request last week.
“We all have to do our part to stop gun violence,” Amalgamated Bank’s Priscilla Sims Brown said in a statement from Guns Down America.
Critics say she and the ISO have done little.
…
On its website, Amalgamated bills itself as “America’s Socially Responsible Bank.” Gun safety and anti-violence is among 10 social causes the bank pursues, along with pro-labor, pro-choice, and climate issues as well as immigrant, minority and LGBTQ+ rights.
As part of its gun safety crusade, Amalgamated says it does not offer loans to “gun, nuclear weapon or ammunition manufacturers or distributors.” It also offers investment funds that exclude those companies.
Brown said in her statement that the merchant category code will allow Amalgamated to “report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales” to law enforcement while not interfering with lawful purchases.
“This action answers the call of millions of Americans who want safety from gun violence, and we are proud to lead a broad coalition of advocates, shareholders, and elected officials to achieve this historic outcome,” Brown said.
However, let’s understand a few facts behind this “socially responsible” bank, for a moment.
Amalgamated Bank isn’t like a lot of other banks. For one thing, the majority shareholder is Workers United, a labor union. As we all know, labor unions often serve as recruiting grounds for Democratic activists. There’s a huge overlap it leftist policies and union priorities.
In other words, she was a partisan hack hired to advance a partisan narrative.
As such, her opinion on the call of millions is immediately suspect. After all, it’s highly unlikely she even considers the fact that, for one thing, the vast majority of people actually didn’t have any opinion at all. For another, there are millions of people who are opposed to what just happened as well.
Brown can celebrate this, but as the above-linked article notes, it’s not actually going to do what people like Brown think it will do. I’ve already found ways around it easily enough and that’s without even leaving my couch.
What’s more, this system will come into massive criticism with the next mass shooting that takes place. We all know it, and it’ll be deserved. You don’t implement a system that essentially tracks the gun purchases of millions of Americans and claim it’s to stop mass shootings, then get a pass when it doesn’t.
Now, we have to ask how long until our other credit card purchases get used against us.
In the meantime, Brown is little more than a mouthpiece for a bank majority-owned by a group in bed with anti-gun Democrats. There’s no reason to believe that even if she did disagree with the move she’d say anything differently.
This will not end well.
https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2022/09/13/credit-card-move-n62274