(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Florida officials introduced a bill on Tuesday that would ban data collection on purchases for firearms and ammunition, stating that the practice is in violation of the Second Amendment.
According to the Daily Caller, the Florida Arms and Ammo Act was introduced by state Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson, along with Republican state Sen. Danny Burgess and Republican state Rep. John Snyder.
Recently, the International Organization for Standardization implemented a merchant code for firearms stores which credit card companies and other financial institutions can use to track firearm-related purchases.
If the bill is passed, credit card companies would no longer be able to track firearm-related purchases in the state of Florida. Every tracked purchase would incur a $10,000 fine per violation.
“The ‘Florida Arms and Ammo Act’ draws a line in the sand and tells multi-national progressive financial institutions, and their allies in Washington, that they cannot covertly create a backdoor firearm registry of Floridians—or else,” Simpson said in a press release.
The ISO is a private organization that works to create business standards across the globe. There are 167 countries that are active members.
A bank based in New York requested that the ISO put together a separate code for guns and ammunition. The group initially refused the request under the guise that it was concerned about the change negatively affecting small businesses.
The ISO changed its tune after Visa, American Express and Mastercard all announced they would adopt the code should the ISO put it together
Lawyers and other legal consul stated that this policy—which bears similarity to the controversial Operation Choke Point tactic waged by the Justice Department during the Obama administration—could result in greater surveillance of American citizens, and several Republican attorneys general vowed to fight the move in court.
“If you go into a gun store, presumably, particularly with larger purchases, they’re going to at least try to infer that it is probable you bought a firearm,” said John Harris, a lawyer who heads the Tennessee Firearms Association.
“It could expand the trend we see where certain banks or credit card companies may say ‘we’re not going to allow a company with a particular ISO code to use our services.’”
Democrats insisted that the implementation of the new ISO code would help the police limit gun-related crimes, such as mass shootings.
They continue to push credit card companies to track purchases of guns and ammunition.
“If governments or credit card companies start to require certain purchase patterns at gun stores be reported to police, that could put a lot of innocent people under suspicion depending on how broad the criteria are,” said Stephen Gutowski, a gun expert who founded firearms policy outlet The Reload.
