A couple of weeks ago, New York Governor Kathy Hochul gathered her allies in the media and signed a new bill. This one basically required credit card companies to use a special Merchant Category Code for credit card transactions at gun stores. She was the third governor to sign such a bill, right after Governors Gavin Newsom and Jared Polis.
What lofty company she's in. However, what Hochul, Newsom, and Polis may not understand is that this idea of tracking gun purchases is never going to work.
Let's back up a bit.
Merchant Category Codes are a kind of code that credit card companies use to help track what kind of purchases you're making. This is used to determine what kind of fees the vendor will be paying, what kind of cash-back benefits one might receive, and things like that. They serve a valid purpose in the credit card industry.
Some time back, a journalist floated the idea of a specific Merchant Category Code for gun stores, ostensibly so the credit card companies could see when people made suspicious purchases and notify police, thus supposedly thwarting a mass shooting.
Amalgamated Bank, which is basically a bank so deeply in the pocket of the Democratic Party that its profits should probably be considered campaign contributions, jumped on the idea and started pushing for it. When a code was concocted, many states reacted negatively. They don't like the idea of gun sales being tracked.
So, in response, we have three governors (so far) who are now trying to require them.
The problem with this is that it won't actually track gun and ammo sales.
Merchant Category Codes are assigned to stores, not products. If I go into an outdoor store and buy $500 worth of guns and go into another outdoor store and buy $500 worth of camping equipment, those purchases will look the exact same. Both would have the same Merchant Category Code, and if its in a state that uses them, they might think I'm running all over town buying up guns, when I just bought one gun at a store with the best deal on that and I got camping supplies at another store that had the best deal on tents and propane stoves.
It will never actually track gun sales.
And, honestly, I'm glad for that.
In the short term, there will probably be some folks who are being asked questions about innocent purchases that had nothing to do with firearms at all, but after a period of time, the companies will likely come to realize they don't know what a blasted soul is buying and selling.
They'll also come to recognize that mass shooters aren't typically buying up dozens of guns in the lead-up to an attack. They're buying one or two just like an average, law-abiding gun buyer would.
And another reason I'm glad this won't work is that we don't need anyone having a database of who has guns and who doesn't. If such a database exists, even in the financial industry, some enterprising jackbooted tyrant will decide he needs that information. Since the data won't actually have that, such a tyrant wouldn't have a clue where to actually look, especially since a large chunk of Americans buy from stores that also sell guns — Walmart, for example. I'm still curious how they'll work that one.
Hochul can sign her bill. Other governors can, too, if they're bound and determined to do it.
They just shouldn't expect a thing out of it.