September 14, 2022: -Gun law advocates praise a decision to take a unique sales code for transactions at gun stores, a move they are demanding to help suspicious flag purchases.
The previous week, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which sets standards for payment transactions, approved the unique merchant code for credit and debit card transactions at U.S. gun stores. Over the weekend, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express said they would start using the recent code.
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said the move is a critical first step toward providing banks and credit card companies the tools they need to recognize dangerous firearm purchasing trends such as a domestic extremist building up an arsenal and report them to law enforcement.
A merchant category code indicates the services or goods sold to consumers. The last time, gun store sales are categorized as “general merchandise.”
The attorneys general of New York and California and Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., were among the notable figures who helped the effort. In New York, dozens of lawmakers had sent letters to the leaders of major credit card companies, urging them to adopt the code.
“When you buy an airline ticket or pay for groceries, your credit card firm has a special code for those retailers. It’s common sense that we have the same gun and ammunition stores policies,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said to the Associated Press over the weekend.
The National Rifle Association said the move “is nothing more than a capitulation to anti-gun politicians and activists bent to erode the rights of law-abiding Americans one transaction at a time.”
“This is not regarding tracking or prevention or any virtuous cause, and it’s about creating a national registry of gun owners,” the statement said.
Mastercard said that it would work to protect “all legal commerce” and “the privacy and decisions of individual cardholders” on its networks. American Express and Visa, the world’s largest payment processor, are committed to implementing the most delinquent code.
“Following ISO’s decision to establish a recent merchant category code, Visa will proceed with the next steps while long-standing rules,” said
. “These new merchant codes will help banks and financial institutions track suspicious and potentially illegal gun purchases,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, which advocates for public measures that can take care of people from gun violence.
Amalgamated Bank and California’s teachers’ pension fund were also among those who laboriously campaigned for the new code.
