Look, I've been saying for years — they don't come for your guns directly, they come after your data. And that's exactly what this new bill tackles.
The House just passed H.R. 1181, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act, with a solid 221-201 vote. Even five Democrats crossed the aisle to support it. This bill bars credit card companies from using those special merchant codes that would tag gun stores separately from other retailers. Why does that matter? Because those codes — pushed by anti-gun groups and their buddies at Amalgamated Bank — are nothing more than a backdoor way to build a registry of who buys what, when, and how much.
Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) nailed it when he called this what it is: a scheme to create "an unconstitutional backdoor gun registry and discrimination against law-abiding gun owners." The bill blocks that cold. It also preempts any state or local laws that try to implement these tracking codes, so California or New York can't go their own way on this.
The NRA and Gun Owners of America are behind this 100%. The NRA put it plainly — this stops credit card companies from building a list that could end up in the hands of the federal government or, worse, handed over to anti-gun activists who'll use it to shame or hassle law-abiding citizens.
You want to know the really scary part? Groups like Giffords have been pushing Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to adopt these codes since 2022, with the admitted goal of flagging "large" purchases for law enforcement. That's not about stopping crime — it's about creating a surveillance system for every American who exercises their Second Amendment rights.
Now this bill heads to the Senate. Let's hope they don't drag their feet on this one. It's a common-sense win for privacy and the Second Amendment, and I'm proud to see Congress actually doing something right for a change.