By Charles C. W. Cooke
Friday, July 18, 2026
In this morning’s DealBook, Andrew Ross Sorkin laments that the House of Representatives has passed a
bill, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act, that:
prevents credit
card networks and banks from using a unique merchant category code, or M.C.C.,
for firearms retailers.
Instead, gun
dealers must be grouped under broader classifications like “general
merchandise” or “sporting goods.”
Per Sorkin, this is a problem because it will prevent
“common-sense ways the financial industry could help identify suspicious
purchasing patterns before mass shootings occur.” He concludes that:
The merchant code
may be swallowed up by the culture wars. Proponents of banning use of the code
say that it’s a step toward a “backdoor gun registry.”
The “culture wars”? “Proponents say”? “Suspicious
purchasing patterns”? A “step toward a ‘backdoor gun registry”? “Common sense”?
My jaw is on the floor. Here is the same Andrew Ross
Sorkin, writing in the same newspaper, in the same newsletter, in 2018:
Here’s an idea.
What if the
finance industry — credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard and American
Express; credit card processors like First Data; and banks like JPMorgan Chase
and Wells Fargo — were to effectively set new rules for the sales of guns in
America?
Collectively, they
have more leverage over the gun industry than any lawmaker. And it wouldn’t be
hard for them to take a stand.
PayPal, Square,
Stripe and Apple Pay announced years ago that they would not allow their
services to be used for the sale of firearms.
“We do not believe
permitting the sale of firearms on our platform is consistent with our values
or in the best interests of our customers,” a spokesman for Square told me.
Gosh, I wonder where the House might possibly have got
the idea that allowing credit card companies to track gun purchases could
present a substantial problem for the right to keep and bear arms! Could it be
from Andrew Ross Sorkin, who, just eight years ago, was openly calling for that
system to be implemented so that those same credit card processors could “set
new rules for the sales of guns in America” — rules that would, he hoped, go as
far as completely preventing “their services to be used for the sale of
firearms”? Back then, Sorkin wasn’t even trying to hide that he hoped to
achieve via the financial system what he could not get through Congress or the
states:
The big financial
firms don’t even have to go that far.
For example, Visa,
which published a 71-page paper in 2016 espousing its “corporate
responsibility,” could easily change its terms of service to say that it won’t
do business with retailers that sell assault weapons, high-capacity magazines
and bump stocks, which make semiautomatic rifles fire faster. (Even the
National Rifle Association has said it would support tighter restrictions on
bump stocks.)
If Mastercard were
to do the same, assault weapons would be eliminated from virtually every
firearms store in America because otherwise the sellers would be cut off from
the credit card system.
There is precedent
for credit card issuers to ban the purchase of completely legal products. Just
this month, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America banned the use of
their cards to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
That is an unmistakable call for Visa, Mastercard, and
the other processors to “eliminate” the most popular rifle in the United States
and “ban the purchase of completely legal products.” And yet Sorkin now has the
gall — the unmitigated brass — to suggest that the House of
Representatives is being motivated to act against the very plan that he
himself laid out by . . . the “culture war”?
In 2018, Sorkin didn’t stop there. He also mused aloud
about the other financial institutions that could choose to undermine the right
to keep and bear arms:
There are other
sectors of the finance industry that could step up. For example, Lloyd’s of
London is the favored insurance company for gun shows. It could pull out.
I am not sure I have ever seen a better example of the
cynical games that gun-control advocates like to play than this. First, they
demand the abolition of the Second Amendment. Then, when their opponents howl,
they dramatically reduce their ask and inquire as to why their critics are so
“upset.”
Given the sheer brazenness of this move, I can only
conclude that Andrew Ross Sorkin believes that his critics are stupid. That
being so, let me make this abundantly clear for him: The “proponents of banning
use of the code” are not worried about the creation of a virtual “gun
registry.” They’re worried that Sorkin’s plan to have credit card companies
unilaterally “set new rules for the sales of guns in America” will be
implemented in full. The answer, as ever, is “No.”
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