AMGOA Staff
Pennsylvania


Posts: 1,429

It comes via Representative Jennifer Wexton, the Democrat who recently replaced Barbara Comstock in Northern Virginia. The obvious inspiration is Andrew Ross Sorkin's suggestion in the New York Times last year that financial institutions should reject or report gun purchases made on credit cards if they deem those purchases excessive, because some mass shootings have been committed with guns bought on credit.

The good news is that this is an actual bill in Congress, not liberals trying to enact gun controls through the financial industry that they couldn't pass into law, the way Sorkin envisioned. The bad news is that, well, it's still a terrible idea.

The bill is meant to get us to a place where the federal government's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and private institutions work together to monitor gun sales, with the latter reporting 'suspicious' firearm related activity to the former for investigation. The process starts with a 'request for information' from financial companies regarding the data they already collect. If that data isn't sufficient to monitor gun sales, and it isn't, Congress will receive a report detailing 'any barriers to obtaining the information.'

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/new-bill-would-get-financial-institutions-involved-in-gun-control/