News & Perspective by Tim E. Hovey
SACRAMENTO – In yet another attempt to vilify the law-abiding gun owner and buyer in California, the legislature has quietly passed a law that will require credit card networks like Visa and Mastercard to provide banks with special retail codes assigned to gun stores to track their sales. As expected, this law here and across the country has been divided along party lines. In case you missed it, the law went into effect in California July 1st of this year.
Touted as a new retail tracking code, this ridiculous law was passed and signed to help flag suspicious gun-related purchases so law enforcement agencies can potentially avert mass shootings and other gun-related crimes. California already has a ten-day waiting period for the purchase of any firearm, referred to when it was passed as a ‘cooling off’ period. Does knowing your personal information, and yes, your credit card information comes with a current address, help to reduce California crime? Doesn’t seem to have helped so far.
As expected, such brilliant blue states as New York and Colorado have followed California’s lead, passing similar laws to track credit card purchases of guns and ammo. Standing firmly behind the second amendment, red states, like Georgia, Iowa, Tennessee and Wyoming have all passed new laws that ban the use of specific gun related credit card codes when citizens purchase firearms. These states are a few of the 17 across the country that have passed the same prohibitive use of credit card tracking codes.
Republican lawmakers, gun-rights advocates and representatives from the National Shooting Sports Foundation all feel that this law will restrict the lawful commerce in firearms, and I agree. Information is power and knowing that your personal credit card information will be reachable through the banks during a gun purchase by just about any law enforcement agencies, such as the sheriff department, ATF and FBI, would make even law-abiding citizens wary.
In my opinion this financial documentation is just another attempt to establish a firearm registry of law-abiding gun owners and buyers. Essentially holding us responsible for the acts of criminals, knowing who has what firearm and where they live is no longer the thoughts of the skeptical and the paranoid. If you’re a gun owner and buyer in California, this is now your reality.
As with any new law that has been poorly written, ill thought out and established without any forethought on enforcement, we can look to Dan Eldridge of Maxon Shooting Supplies in suburban Chicago as being the capless superhero in this scenario. Dan’s shop has yet to be recategorized, but he’s already placed an ATM in his store. If you’re looking to move around the California legislators recent attack on your constitutional rights, do what I do, pay cash!