In this morning’s DealBook, Andrew Ross Sorkin laments that the House of Representatives has passed a bill, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act, that:

prevents credit card networks and banks from using a unique merchant category code, or M.C.C., for firearms retailers. Instead, gun dealers must be grouped under broader classifications like “general merchandise” or “sporting goods.”

prevents credit card networks and banks from using a unique merchant category code, or M.C.C., for firearms retailers.

Instead, gun dealers must be grouped under broader classifications like “general merchandise” or “sporting goods.”

Per Sorkin, this is a problem because it will prevent “common-sense ways the financial industry could help identify suspicious purchasing patterns before mass shootings occur.” He concludes that:

The merchant code may be swallowed up by the culture wars. Proponents of banning use of the code say that it’s a step toward a “backdoor gun registry.”

The merchant code may be swallowed up by the culture wars. Proponents of banning use of the code say that it’s a step toward a “backdoor gun registry.”

The “culture wars”? “Proponents say”? “Suspicious purchasing patterns”? A “step toward a ‘backdoor gun registry”? “Common sense”?

My jaw is on the floor. Here is the same Andrew Ross Sorkin, writing in the same newspaper, in the same newsletter, in 2018:

Here’s an idea. What if the finance industry — credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express; credit card processors like First........

© National Review