Second Amendment organizations praised Republican lawmakers’ legislation intended to prevent credit card companies, banks and other payment processors from tracking lawful gun purchases.
The “Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act” would ban payment card networks from assigning specific codes to track lawful gun transactions or identify firearm retailers as being engaged in the business of selling firearms. Firearm retailers would not be required to use a separate merchant category code (MCC), a multi-digit code used to classify merchants into a specific category based on the type of business, trade or services supplied.
If passed, the attorney general would be required to submit an annual report to Congress that outlines all the investigations related to the issue and to provide any analysis relating to the law’s efficacy.
Gun rights organizations celebrated the bill’s role in protecting Americans’ Second Amendment rights. The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) Executive Director John Commerford said payment card networks attempted to “surveil and stigmatize” Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
“The National Rifle Association has led the fight across the country to protect the privacy of law-abiding firearm owners,” Commerford told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “H.R. 1181, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act, prohibits payment card networks and financial institutions from using special merchant category codes that single out firearms retailers, blocking the creation of a backdoor national registry of gun owners. The push for firearm-specific merchant category codes was a blatant attempt to surveil and stigmatize constitutionally protected activity by weaponizing the financial system against Second Amendment rights. The NRA urges every lawmaker who supports constitutional rights to support this critical bill and ensure its swift passage.”
Gun Owners of America deputy director of Federal Affairs Ben Huyn Sanderson told the DCNF that entities like Bank of America turned over financial information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during former President Joe Biden’s administration with an emphasis on gun purchases.
Bank of America told the DCNF they “followed all applicable legal obligations and regulatory requirements” in their interactions with law enforcement and the Treasury Department.
A National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) spokesperson told the DCNF the legislation was “critical” in preventing blue states from interfering in the lawful purchases of firearms.
“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,” NAGR Director of Communications Director Taylor Rhodes said. “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.”
“That policy is critical because blue states around the nation have made clear they are willing to use the banking system to monitor and intimidate gun owners and have even gone as far as shutting down banking for pro-gun businesses,” Rhodes continued.
In 2018, then-Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was sued by the NRA after his administration used the threat of investigations to coerce banks and other financial services companies into ending business relationships with the gun-rights group.
Republican Reps. Riley Moore of West Virginia, Andy Barr of Kentucky and Richard Hudson of North Carolina introduced the legislation in the House in February 2025. Republican Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty introduced it in the Senate. The bill advanced through the House Financial Services Committee in December 2025 and the House Rules Committee approved a closed rule for floor consideration in an 8-4 party-line vote, placing it on the House floor calendar.
“I’ve spent the better part of my short career in public service fighting financial institutions that push a political agenda. Let me be clear: any attempt to collect data on Americans simply exercising their God-given rights is wrong, and I won’t stand for it,” Moore said. “We’ve seen how the Biden Administration pressured financial institutions to hand over data on their customers, and the possibility of a private database of gun owners falling into the hands of a future anti-gun administration is unacceptable.”
Summary: This bill prohibits payment card networks and covered entities from requiring or assigning merchant category codes that distinguish firearms retailers from general-merchandise or sporting-goods retailers.
Key Provisions:
– Bans special merchant codes specifically for…— US Bill Tracker (@US_Bill_Tracker) June 23, 2026
House Republicans questioned the implementation of the International Organization for Standardization’s MCC in September 2022 to make it easier to track gun purchases, according to a February 2025 press release by Hudson’s office. Visa, Mastercard and American Express paused the implementation of the code in March 2023 over legal uncertainties and confusion on how the codes would function. The pause was never lifted.
Visa, Mastercard and American Express did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
Former President Barack Obama’s administration launched “Operation Chokepoint,” which used the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to pressure banks into denying financial services to companies in the firearms industry. While the first Trump administration halted the practice, some financial institutions, such as Citigroup, continued to pressure companies in the firearms industries to adopt certain practices or face account closure for years afterward.
Citigroup announced in June 2025 it would end its practice of debanking firearms retailers who sold guns to young adults ages 18 to 20, citing “regulatory developments, recent executive orders and federal legislation.”
In a May 2014 report, the House Oversight Committee noted that firearms sales were among the legal industries targeted by “Operation Choke Point,” which used the threat of investigations under Section 951 of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 to force financial institutions to close the accounts by entities like coin dealers, firearms dealers and short-term lending establishments.
(DCNF)
