More Than 100 House Republicans Demand Answers From Credit Card Giants Categorizing Sales At Gun Stores By John Rigolizzo for Daily Wire
More than 100 House Republicans are demanding answers from major credit card companies over the controversial decision to categorize gunsales.
In letters to the CEOs of Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and House Republicans demanded the companies answer questions about their decision to adopt new Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that would categorize gun purchases separately from other purchases. The Republican members asked the creditors to provide their prospective standards to the public, and questioned whether categorizing gun purchases and flagging law enforcement was an attempt to skirt federal law by effectively creating a gun registry.
“As you know, the ISO uses four-digit codes known as MCCs to classify merchants and businesses by the type of goods or services provided,” the members began. “There were already two MCCs that captured legal firearm sales, 5999 for Miscellaneous Retail Stores and 5941 for Sporting Goods Stores.”
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In July 2021, the left-wing activist banking firm Amalgamated Bank applied for the ISO to adopt a separate Category Code for firearm dealers. The ISO rejected the application in October, along with an appeal filed in November 2021, the Republican members noted. The ISO said at the time that such a narrow category would fail to capture gun sales at sporting goods stores and would place an undue burden on small firearm retailers.
Both Visa and American Express raised concerns about the effort to establish a firearm-specific MCC. “Specific MCC [codes] in narrow [retail] areas are challenging,” an employee from American Express told CBS News in September. “Managing long lists of narrowly defined MCCs can become burdensome if there isn’t a compelling reason for the long list.”
