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Banks Want to Help Identify Mass Shooters, but Visa and Mastercard Decide Against Creating Code to Track Firearms Purchases

Banks Want to Help Identify Mass Shooters, but Visa and Mastercard Decide Against Creating Code to Track Firearms Purchases

By Yehudit Garmaise

Banks wanted to help to identify potential mass shooters: but Visa and Mastercard have decided against continuing to create a code triggered by sales of firearms.

Banks, which detect many potential misdeeds by monitoring customers’ purchases, already file thousands of suspicious activity reports (SARs) every year, and tracking gun purchases would be no different, said Amalgamated Bank CEO Priscilla Sims Brown, who led the push for banks to alert the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when firearms are purchased.

The credit card companies’ new code that tracks firearms sales would have been in effect at gun and ammunition stores but not at other locations, Bloomberg reported.

Although the major payment networks previously all agreed they would implement the new code that would track transactions involving firearms, now Visa and Mastercard are saying the codes might not provide enough detail about customers’ purchases to help find mass shooters.

The codes, for instance, would not distinguish between automatic rifles and safety equipment, said the credit cards companies, while many politicians and guns-rights advocates said the proposed code intruded on their Second Amendment rights and privacy.  

In September 2022, two dozen state attorneys general sent a letter to Visa’s then-chief executive officer, Al Kelly, and to Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, calling on them to “take immediate action to comport with our consumer protection laws and respect the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

Since then, several Republican politicians have filed bills in states such as Florida and Mississippi that seek to ban banks and payment processors from using the firearms purchase alert code.

In 2023, when the US, which experiences hundreds more shootings every year than any other country, has already experienced a horrifying 100 mass shootings: not even three months into the year.

Last year, the US had not seen 100 mass shootings until May.

Among 2022’s horrific 647 mass shootings was when 19 fourth graders and two teachers were gunned down at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. 

“Americans are tired of fearing if they or their families will be the next victims of a mass shooting,” Kris Brown, president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence, an organization seeking to mitigate gun violence in the US, told CNN. “Our children are tired of being told to ‘run, hide, and fight.’” 

photo credit: Flickr


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