Colorado Really Wants to Track and Report Your Gun and Ammo Purchases

Fourteen states now have laws on the books outlawing the use of gun store-specific merchant category codes designed to track firearm and ammunition purchases paid for with credit cards. The use of the codes is the brainchild of anti-gun bankers, journalists, and the gun control industry. They claim surveillance of purchases will somehow reduce “gun violence” by allowing Big Brother to monitor the buying habits of dangerous people doing dangerous things by monitoring “dangerous purchasing patterns”… like buying guns and ammunition.

In reality, this is yet another example of government types and others defining extremism down to include anyone who dares to exercise their Second Amendment rights. This is all being cheered on, of course, by the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex which sees it as another important step on the road to achieving their aspirational goal of a national registration scheme.

The 14 states that have outlawed the use of these codes are pretty much the ones you’d expect…mostly SEC and western red states where gun rights are generally respected. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, then, that midnight blue Colorado has just passed and signed into law a bill mandating the use of the codes for firearm retailers in the state.

Governor Jared Polis aptly chose May 1 to sign the bill into law.

His office is just as proud as can be about the new bill and issued a statement trumpeting the intrusion on Coloradans’ privacy . . .

Today Governor Jared Polis signed legislation to combat gun violence by establishing a new code to categorize gun sales and help law enforcement recognize dangerous firearm purchasing patterns.

Sponsored by Senator Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial, and Representatives Javier Mabrey, D-Denver, and Meg Froelich, D-Englewood, SB24-066 requires payment card networks like Visa or Mastercard to provide a specific code, known as a merchant code, for businesses that sell firearms and ammunition. Merchant codes allow banks and credit card companies to recognize dangerous firearm purchasing patterns – like a domestic extremist building up an arsenal – and report them to law enforcement.

Polis’s announcement rationalizes his support of the bill by citing a study published by Igor Volsky’s Guns Down America gun control operation that claims monitoring gun purchases would allegedly have “prevented many mass shootings.”

Uh huh.

Polis and Colorado Democrats conveniently ignore the clear privacy invasions inherent in the law, not to mention the lack of anything approaching transparency surrounding how firearm-related transactions will be monitored and the data used. But no one expects anything else in the Centennial State any more, where any incremental infringement on gun rights is seen as a feature, not a bug.

Last year Polis signed laws raising the age to buy guns, instituting a “red flag” law, and putting in place a three-day waiting period on gun purchases. The Colorado legislature is still wrestling with an “assault weapons” ban bill that would outlaw pretty much any semi-automatic long gun that uses a detachable magazine. It’s already passed the House. If it managed to clear the Senate, Polis will sign it faster than you can say Michael Bloomberg.