A proposal to outlaw the prevention of firearm sales in Mississippi is being considered in the state House of Representatives, per one committee chairman.
During a recent interview on MidDays with Gerard Gibert, Representative Nick Bain, R-Corinth, noted that leaders within the National Rifle Association (NRA) have warned him of possible hindrances on gun sales nationwide.
According to Bain, the NRA claims that major credit card companies are planning to use commodity codes to block individuals from purchasing guns and ammunition with their products. The House Judicial B Committee chairman sees this measure as an infringement of Second Amendment rights.
Therefore, to prevent the possibility of such occurrences taking place in the Magnolia State, Bain is working with lawmakers within the Judicial B Committee to advance legislation that would outlaw credit card companies from blocking lawful transactions of firearms and accessories.
“You’ve got credit cards that have a code on them and if you use that credit card at some stores or whatever, that particular credit card won’t allow you to buy the ammo or the guns because it’s whatever their agenda is,” Bain said. “You want to buy some ammo at Walmart or your local mom-and-pop store and the credit card puts a block on it because they don’t want you using their company to buy ammo. We’re going to make that basically illegal. They cannot do that.”
Though there have been no recorded cases of legal firearm transactions being declined by any large credit card issuer, American Express, MasterCard, and Visa announced in September 2022 that they were going to begin the process of implementing a new merchant category code for gun realtors in the U.S.
The new system implemented by the credit card companies will separately categorize sales at gun and ammunition stores in order to track suspicious transactions of firearms and ammunition — which received pushback from 12 Republican state attorneys general, including Mississippi AG Lynn Fitch, as an unconstitutional practice that targets law-abiding gun owners.
Watch the full interview with Bain below.
