WASHINGTON D.C., DC — Nearly 50 Congressional Democrats are calling on major credit card companies to reimplement a code that would flag suspicious gun purchases in hopes of preventing mass shootings.
In Sept. 2022, the International Organization for Standardization created a "Merchant Category Code" for firearms retailers. Credit card companies already use these codes for all types of businesses.
The goal was to help credit card companies flag any large or suspicious purchases of guns or ammo. Companies could then pass along that information to law enforcement to help them intercept anyone who might have intentions of carrying out some type of attack.
But in March 2023, credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express stopped implementing the code. At the time, they said some state-level lawmakers were trying to make rules to prevent the use of the codes in their states. The companies said it would be inconsistent and confusing to use the MCC in some states and not others.
Now, those lawmakers are renewing the push, asking the CEOs of those companies why they stopped.
On March 9, 2023, Visa shared the following update on a new merchant category code for gun and ammunition shops:
"During the past several months, multiple states in the U.S. have been considering legislation to prohibit or restrict the adoption of the merchant category code (MCC) for gun and ammunition stores. These legislative actions disrupt the intent of global standards and create significant confusion and legal uncertainty in the payments ecosystem regarding this code and its use, including with acquirers, issuers, merchants and payment networks. We have therefore decided to pause implementation of the MCC at this time."
NEWS CENTER Maine reached out to Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover on Friday to see if their positions had changed. We have not yet received a response.
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree is one of the lawmakers on the letter. She said the explanations from companies are insufficient.
"These are big credit card companies. They're collecting our data, parsing it out, using it, selling it. Who knows what they do with all the data they've got," Pingree said. "They're masters at it, working with data. That's how they make their money. So that [explanation] doesn't hold water."
Lawmakers say the gunmen in the Pulse nightclub and Aurora movie theater shootings both used credit cards to buy the weapons they used. Pingree believes this Merchant Category Code is one tool that could help law enforcement, as gun safety legislation repeatedly fails in Congress.
"You know, it's not the major fix that would do everything. But, if [credit card companies] could make a voluntary decision to do the right thing and we had a little bit more information and it gave law enforcement one more tool, perhaps we'd keep one more person alive," Pingree said.
Pingree said the Merchant Category Code would not disclose what type of guns or equipment a person buys, just how much they spend. She did not know how much money a person would have to spend for a credit card company to activate a suspicious activity report.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 539 mass shootings since March 1, 2023, to the time this article was written.
On Friday, Pingree and the rest of Maine's congressional delegation finished meetings with a group of families and survivors of the Lewiston mass shooting in October. Attorneys for the families also attended. The delegation said it is pushing the Army Inspector General for a full investigation into what role the Army had in possibly intervening after the shooter's fellow officers notified them of his paranoid and violent behavior during an annual training in New York.
The delegation sent a new letter to the Inspector General for the Department of the Army on Friday.
“We believe it is imperative that you, as the Inspector General of the Army, conduct an investigation separate from the ongoing administrative review conducted pursuant to the Army’s Suicide Prevention Program regulations. This tragedy warrants a much broader, independent inquiry,” the delegation wrote in the letter. “We must work to fully understand what happened—and what could have been done differently that might have prevented the Lewiston shooting—on the local, state, and federal levels. We must also give the American people confidence that the investigation is comprehensive and unbiased.”