Guns for sale are displayed at Maxon Shooter's Supplies in Des Plaines, Ill., Tuesday, June 25, 2024. A new national divide is emerging among states over whether to track sales by gun stores.
Some Democratic lawmakers and gun-control activists hope the new retail tracking code will help financial institutions flag suspicious gun-related purchases for law enforcement agencies, potentially averting mass shootings and other crimes. Lawmakers in Colorado and New York have followed California’s lead.
States have dug opposing trench lines on other gun policies. On July 4, for example, Republican-led Louisiana will become the 29th state to allow residents to carry concealed guns without a permit. Those category lists are distributed by credit card networks to banks, which assign particular codes to businesses whose accounts they handle. Some credit card issuers use the category codes for customer reward points.
At the urging of New York-based Amalgamated Bank, which worked with gun-control groups, the International Organization for Standardization adopted a new four-digit category code for gun and ammunition shops in 2022. Major credit card networks initially said they would implement it but backed off under pressure from conservative politicians and the gun industry.
Visa, the nation’s largest payment network, recently updated its merchant data manual to add the firearms code to comply with California’s law.