Tennessee Bans Financial Tracking of Gun Purchases
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a new law into effect this week aimed at safeguarding the privacy of gun owners’ financial transactions. The law, passed by the state legislature, will prohibit financial institutions from tracking purchases of guns and ammunition made by their customers.
Under the “Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act,” banks and credit card companies are barred from requiring gun stores to use a separate merchant code that would identify them as firearm retailers. This measure, which has been advocated for by other states and the federal government, seeks to prevent transaction histories from being easily identifiable as firearm-related purchases.
Additionally, the legislation prohibits financial institutions from rejecting transactions solely because they involve firearms purchases and prevents government entities from establishing a gun registry of privately owned firearms or firearms owned by dealers.
State Representative Rusty Grills emphasized that the purpose of the law is to safeguard Second Amendment rights by preventing financial institutions from compiling a database of gun owners.
“We would rather be able to protect our rights from the beginning rather than have to fight for our rights back at the end,” Grills said in a statement to The Daily Wire.
The enactment of this law in Tennessee serves as a contrast to recent legislation in California, where earlier this year credit card companies including Visa, Mastercard, and American Express announced they would be introducing a specialized merchant code that tracks gun-related purchases.
Liberal lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, argued that such measures could prevent mass shootings by enabling the tracking of suspicious gun purchases.
“The sooner credit card companies and banks begin using the new [merchant code] for gun retailers and tracking suspicious gun purchases, the more mass shootings we will have a shot at preventing before they occur,” Warren argued.
