Visa Inc., a payment processor, announced on Saturday that it intends to begin categorizing sales at gun shops separately. This is a significant victory for gun control advocates who believe it will make it easier to monitor suspicious spikes in gun sales that might signal the beginning of a mass shooting.
Gun rights activists and gun lobbyists, however, are likely to be incensed by Visa’s decision since they have maintained that classifying gun sales would unfairly highlight an industry when most sales do not result in mass shootings. Visa is the largest payment processor in the world. It joins Mastercard and American Express, who also declared their intention to proceed with classifying sales from gun shops.
The new merchant code for gun transactions released on Friday by the International Organization for Standardization, according to Visa, will be adopted. Gun store sales were categorized as “general items” up until Friday.
The payment processor issued a statement saying, “Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with the next actions, while ensuring we protect all legitimate trade on the Visa network in compliance with our long-standing regulations.
Being the largest payment network, Visa’s adoption is significant. Along with Mastercard and Amex, it will probably put pressure on banks, which issue credit and debit cards, to follow suit. Banks will determine whether to let sales at gun shops occur on their issued cards; Visa serves as a mediator between merchants and banks.
Recently, proponents of gun control have made great progress in this area. The ISO and banks had been under pressure to adopt this regulation from New York City politicians and pension funds.
California and New York, home to two of the biggest public pension funds in the nation, have been pressuring the biggest credit card companies to create sales codes specifically for firearm-related sales that could flag questionable purchases or make it easier to track how guns and ammunition are sold.
Almost every type of purchase now has a merchant category code, including those from supermarkets, clothes stores, coffee shops, and many more merchants.
“Your credit card provider has a unique number for those retailers whether you pay for groceries or an airplane ticket. The same regulations should apply to ammunition and gun dealers, according to common sense, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who attributes the lethal violence in his city to the widespread use of firearms.
Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller, claimed that using it as a weapon to combat gun violence was both ethical and practical.
Sadly, credit card companies have not provided support for this easy-to-use, useful, and perhaps life-saving instrument. Before Visa and other companies made the change, Lander recently stated that the time has come for them to do so.
Lander serves as a trustee for the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the Teachers’ Retirement System, and the Board of Education Retirement System, which collectively own 667,200 shares of American Express, valued at about $92.49 million, 1.1 million shares of MasterCard, valued at about $347.59 million, and 1.85 million shares of Visa, valued at about $363.86 million.
The creation of a merchant category code for independent retailers of firearms and ammunition, according to pension funds and proponents of gun control, could help the cause reducing gun violence. The attacker purchased more than $26,000 worth of weapons and ammunition using credit cards a week prior to the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people died after a shooter opened fire in 2016.
Since merchant codes only keep track of the sort of merchant where the credit or debit card is used, rather than the actual commodities purchased, proponents of gun rights contend that tracking transactions at gun stores would unfairly target legitimate purchases of firearms. A sale of a gun safe, which costs several thousand dollars and is regarded as a necessary component of proper gun ownership, can be mistaken for a sizable purchase at a gun store.
According to Lars Dalseide, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, “the (industry’s) decision to create a firearm-specific code is nothing more than a concession to anti-gun politicians and activists bent on destroying the rights of law-abiding Americans one transaction at a time.”
Public pension funds have influenced market conditions and public policy over the years by utilizing their sizable investment portfolios.
The second-largest pension fund in the nation, the California Teachers Fund, has long targeted the firearms business. It has sold off its stock in weapons companies and tried to stop some merchants from selling firearms.
The teacher’s fund declared gun control a priority four years ago. It urged shops to “watch abnormalities at the point of sale, to record all firearm sales, to audit firearms inventory on a regular basis, and to proactively help law enforcement” in addition to requiring background checks.
