Governors Brian Kemp of Georgia and Bill Lee of Tennessee recently signed Second Amendment privacy acts, preventing the use of credit card merchant codes to gather data on retail firearm buyers. Kemp signed HB 1018 on Monday, while Lee signed SB 2223 on Tuesday, bringing the total number of states with these protections to 14.
According to Breitbart News, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express are implementing a special merchant code in California to track gun purchases. CBS News reported that this code is in compliance with a California law allowing banks to report suspicious gun purchases to law enforcement.
Previously, major credit card companies had plans to track gun and gun-related purchases nationally but abandoned them after facing backlash. In response to pressure from gun control groups, Visa agreed to flag gun and ammunition purchases, before eventually dropping the plans. Discover also planned to track these purchases in 2023, but later decided against it.
Despite these changes, California is set to enforce a new law in 2025 that will require credit cards to track gun sales. Aside from Georgia and Tennessee, other states prohibiting such data collection include Iowa, Kentucky, Wyoming, Indiana, Utah, Texas, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia.
AWR Hawkins, a Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, provided this information.
