Politics

Only 5 Democrats Voted For Bill That Would Ban Tracking Gun Purchases

Democratic Maine Rep. Jared Golden is pictured. (YouTube / Screenshot / Public — User: Jared Golden for Congress)

The House of Representatives passed legislation Tuesday to safeguard the privacy of law-abiding citizens who purchase firearms, with nearly all Democrats voting against the measure.

The bill, H.R. 1181, also known as the “Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act,” prohibits payment card networks from assigning specific codes to track lawful gun transactions or to identify firearm retailers; the measure passed with a 221-201 vote, with support from only five Democrats. The legislation was a response to the implementation of a specified merchant category code (MCC), a multi-digit code used to classify merchants, for firearms dealers in September 2022.

Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine and Adam Gray of California supported final passage of the bill, but joined their fellow Democrats in supporting a “motion to recommit.”

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right. Americans should never have their lawful firearm purchases tracked by financial institutions or payment processors,” Republican West Virginia Rep. Riley Moore said in a statement posted on X. “The creation of a separate merchant category code for gun stores at the behest of the Democrat-affiliated Amalgamated Bank opens the door to creating an unconstitutional backdoor gun registry and discrimination against law-abiding gun owners.”

“My bill stops this dangerous overreach, protects consumers’ financial privacy, and ensures that a backdoor federal gun registry can never be created through credit card transaction data,” Moore continued. “I’m proud the House has acted to defend both the Second Amendment and Americans’ right to privacy.”

“This bill is an important step toward stopping the financial surveillance of peaceable gun owners. The feds have no business building a financial surveillance system to track what law-abiding Americans buy, especially when those purchases involve the exercise of a constitutional right,” National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) Director of Communications Director Taylor Rhodes told the Daily Caller News Foundation prior to the bill’s passage.

“Our position is simple: buying a firearm, ammunition, or gun-related product from any business should not turn an average citizen into a target for banks, credit card companies, activist bureaucrats, or anti-gun politicians,” Rhodes continued.

In 2018, the National Rifle Association sued then-Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo after his administration used the threat of investigations involving “reputational risk” to coerce banks and other financial services companies into ending business relationships with the pro-Second Amendment group.

The Obama administration launched “Operation Chokepoint,” which used the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to pressure banks to deny companies in the firearms industry financial services. While the first Trump administration halted the practice, some financial institutions continued to pressure companies in the firearms industries to adopt certain practices or face the closure of their accounts years afterwards.

“NSSF is grateful to the U.S. House of Representatives for the bipartisan vote to pass H.R. 1181, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act. Congress is taking concrete steps to ensure that credit card companies cannot conspire with antigun politicians to create back-door watchlists of law-abiding Americans who are simply exercising their Second Amendment rights to legally acquire firearms and ammunition,” National Shooting Sports Foundation Managing Director of Public Affairs Mark Oliva told the DCNF. “This is already law in 20 states. This insidious plan to collect firearm purchase history was hatched by Amalgamated Bank and Andrew Ross Sorkin as an underhanded means to force gun control outside of legislative channels through ‘woke’ corporate policies. Three states – California, Colorado and New York – require Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) to be collected and monitor legal firearm and ammunition purchases. That is unconscionable.”

“Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dodged Congress’s questions of the Biden administration illegally collecting the firearm transaction history of lawful gun buyers in an Orwellian move to chill and suppress Second Amendment liberties,” Oliva continued. “Days later, President Biden’s Treasury Department admitted to Sen. Tim Scott that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in fact, illegally surveilled Americans purchasing firearms and ammunition.”

The NRA and Gun Owners of America did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the DCNF about passage of the legislation.