Tracking credit card gun purchases

It sounds like if they go this route, the result will be lots of useless data. I bought my last gun from FleetFarm. They had $116M in sales last year. I'm guessing it wasn't all firearms.

Maybe we can make them really paranoid.

"According to CC statistics, firearm sales jumped 50x!"
Buy a bore brush ... Every day :D
 
Here's the potential significance of this issue. It's very similar to the FEDX and UPS situation where they were pressured to not let regular tax paying American citizens ship legally owned firearms like we've been doing. Now, FEDX and UPS have established policy that limits who can and cannot utilize their services. There is no law here.

Similarly, once the credit cards can distinguish by code which purchases are guns and/or ammo, they could be pressured, like FEDX and UPS, to establish policies as to what products their cards can and cannot be used for, hence, firearms and ammo could be excluded as acceptable products.

It's all hypothetical, but hey, who'd have ever thought shippers would turn down business shipping firearms for law abiding citizens.
 
What I foresee if this is implemented is higher transaction fees for smaller firearms retailers like myself. Would be considered "high risk" I currently pay 3.5-4% on all card transactions. Big box stores pay a far lower percent so they probably won't be affected.
At some point in the future all commerce will be electronic and everything you buy will be tracked. But not in my lifetime.
But if the world goes to **** in a handbasket, all bets are off.
 
C'mon, folks...there are 2.8 police of all variations (local, state, federal, special [lile railroad or aiport police]) per 1,000 population in this country. They already have things to do.

The fantasy of some sinister, future government gun confiscation was spun up was for the same reasons any number of fantasies have been - so a few could get money, power, and votes.

Give me a break.

Huh? Who said anything about gun confiscation?
 
Similarly, once the credit cards can distinguish by code which purchases are guns and/or ammo, they could be pressured, like FEDX and UPS, to establish policies as to what products their cards can and cannot be used for, hence, firearms and ammo could be excluded as acceptable products.

Doesn't PayPal already do that?
 
C'mon, folks...there are 2.8 police of all variations (local, state, federal, special [like railroad or aiport police]) per 1,000 population in this country. They already have things to do.

You are right about that, and some law enforcement would push back, so a different approach is necessary.

I don't think of it in terms of conspiracy theory or fantasy it is more a multi prong strategy to circumvent the 2nd amendment.

Chokehold was a reality, it was sinister and sometimes these strategies work.
 
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Me neither, but the idea bothers me. If this were 80 years ago these toads would be tracking sales of Kosher food to help identify and round up the Jews. The whole thing disgusts me.

Meh…

Pay cash or write a check. If you can’t afford to pay for it up-front, you shouldn’t buy it. Racking up debt on a credit card is a horrible move, unless you get cash back on your purchases and you pay off the total every month.

Most of the CC companies charge 20% interest or more on carryover balances. Can you say loansharking? If a financial institution would give me half that interest rate on my savings, I’d pull all my retirement investments out of the markets.

I use a credit card account to track my aviation related business expenses and it gets paid down to zero at the end of the month, so no interest is charged.

People using credit cards for gun purchases have the same pay it with in 30 days and no interests applies option.

But that’s not the problem. The problem is that banks issue debit cards that are serviced by Visa or Mastercard, so it’s tracking Debit purchases as well.

And of course let’s say I buy a $20,000 boat at a Bass Pro Shop, which also sells guns and put it on mu debit card. If visa tracks sales at gun shops and counts bass pro shops as a gun shop, will they report it to the ATF? Apparently. If so, I can probably expect a visit from an ATF agent wanting to see the guns and ammo I bought.

Credit card companies have used merchant categories for decades, but in the past it has been for their own purposes. For example if you start using a credit card to buy groceries and you maintain a running balance on it that is increasing, they’ll flag you as a credit risk, since you are buying groceries on credit. They’ll start reducing your credit limit to protect their own interests.

This merchant category is different, as it’s flagging how you spend your money and reporting it to the government.

It needs a court challenge.
 
As I understand it, it would identify the fact that you made a purchase in a place that sells guns, it would not be able to identify what you bought. I know that when I worked in a pawn shop, when I ran a card there was no identifying info as to what your purchase actually was.
 
I don't know the final outcome, but I remember years ago that some mega bank was going to close all accounts of the McMillan stock company because they were is a "questionable business" i.e. gun related business.

At the time McMillan had a big government contract to make stocks for our military sniper rifles.

The lesson is that -if they want to- they can use your credit card purchase history to freeze you out of the ability to buy-sell or borrow money without any action by the government.
 
So what? It's not illegal, and sales are already recorded and trackable. Nothing I'm losing sleep over.

Wait until they start refusing to do the transactions, or charge some exorbitant “ service fee “ for each firearm-related transaction.
Also, more and more companies are running credit reports on prospective new-hires. What do you want to bet those flagged transactions start showing up on the reports?
 
Hand basket?

What I foresee if this is implemented is higher transaction fees for smaller firearms retailers like myself. Would be considered "high risk" I currently pay 3.5-4% on all card transactions. Big box stores pay a far lower percent so they probably won't be affected.
At some point in the future all commerce will be electronic and everything you buy will be tracked. But not in my lifetime.
But if the world goes to **** in a handbasket, all bets are off.

Hand basket? Hell’s bells!
They are in the process of loading it into a WallyWorld shopping cart.
☹️☹️☹️
 
Credit Cards

My local gun shop stopped allowing credit cards for any purchases 20 years ago. He said the cut the credit card people were taking was getting bigger and bigger and allowing someone to use a card to purchase was eating into his profit. Note: His business income did not change after he quit accepting credit cards. Most of his customers were repeat customers and after he quit accepting credit cards they just started bringing cash or checks. Of course he was a private gun shop not some big Chain.
SWCA 892
 
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Wouldn’t it be great if we could get rid of all that messy and unsanitary paper and coin money and replace it with genuine American digital currency? We could call it Fedcoin. It would also allow any government agency to monitor every citizen’s income and purchases so we could make sure that everyone paid their fair share of taxes and wasn’t purchasing anything which was harmful to society. Nah, that could never happen in a million years.
 
I use a credit card account to track my aviation related business expenses and it gets paid down to zero at the end of the month, so no interest is charged.

People using credit cards for gun purchases have the same pay it with in 30 days and no interests applies option.

But that’s not the problem. The problem is that banks issue debit cards that are serviced by Visa or Mastercard, so it’s tracking Debit purchases as well.

And of course let’s say I buy a $20,000 boat at a Bass Pro Shop, which also sells guns and put it on mu debit card. If visa tracks sales at gun shops and counts bass pro shops as a gun shop, will they report it to the ATF? Apparently. If so, I can probably expect a visit from an ATF agent wanting to see the guns and ammo I bought.

Credit card companies have used merchant categories for decades, but in the past it has been for their own purposes. For example if you start using a credit card to buy groceries and you maintain a running balance on it that is increasing, they’ll flag you as a credit risk, since you are buying groceries on credit. They’ll start reducing your credit limit to protect their own interests.

This merchant category is different, as it’s flagging how you spend your money and reporting it to the government.

It needs a court challenge.
There have been developments on multiple fronts lately.
A place like Bass pro has a good degree of plausible deniability right now. Could be guns and ammo ... Could be fishing gear or anything else in the store.
For now, that is an advantage for us.
But as the ATF " closes loopholes" as is the latest push, shops both great and small will have to adapt to legal compliance issues.
Dedicated LGS can be pushed out by the changes while a box store can shift focus to non firearm sales.
Either way, we lose places to buy our stuff
 
Wouldn’t it be great if we could get rid of all that messy and unsanitary paper and coin money and replace it with genuine American digital currency? We could call it Fedcoin. It would also allow any government agency to monitor every citizen’s income and purchases so we could make sure that everyone paid their fair share of taxes and wasn’t purchasing anything which was harmful to society. Nah, that could never happen in a million years.

That was on my mind. When covid hit our city most all places went to credit card only. That included Wmart,home depot,and most every ready food places. Reasons included covid, no change and lack of staff. If it were to go on long term it could have gotten iffy around here.
 
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