While many within the Democratic Party would love to see the Second Amendment obliterated, abolished, or otherwise incapacitated, only the most outrageously disillusioned among them believe that this is actually an achievable goal.
No, the idea that the government would one day go door-to-door to confiscate firearms is precisely the sort of situation that the amendment itself acts as insurance against, and so the left’s only real recourse is to make exercising your Second Amendment rights a chore. Instead of pushing for some wide, sweeping sea change to the Constitution itself, anti-gun advocates simply look to complicate our ability to bear arms.
Now, as political pressure regarding the Second Amendment seeps out into the world of commerce, Visa and other major credit card providers are planning to roll out a new way of tracking gun store purchases, raising privacy concerns for many Americans.
Payment processor Visa Inc. said Saturday that it plans to start separately categorizing sales at gun shops, a major win for gun control advocates who say it will help better track suspicious surges of gun sales that could be a prelude to a mass shooting.
But the decision by Visa, the world’s largest payment processor, will likely provoke the ire of gun rights advocates and gun lobbyists, who have argued that categorizing gun sales would unfairly flag an industry when most sales do not lead to mass shootings. It joins Mastercard and American Express, which also said they plan to move forward with categorizing gun shop sales.
The maneuver will likely change the way that Americans purchase firearms, ammunition, and safety equipment.
Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”
“Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” the payment processor said in a statement.
This sort of consumer spying is sure to meet resistance on the right side of the aisle, particularly as a separate stream of business leaders continue to push us toward a cash-less society, setting up a potential situation in which you could not purchase a weapon without having your accounts flagged.
