Posts Tagged banking

Bill To Require Suspicious Gun Purchases

From Reason:

Rep. Jennifer Wexton’s (D–Va.) “Gun Violence Prevention Through Financial Intelligence Act” would require the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to “request information from financial institutions for the purpose of developing an advisory about the identification and reporting of suspicious activity.” The bill’s aim is to identify a consistent purchasing pattern among people who buy firearms and firearm accessories in order to conduct “lone wolf acts of terror” and expose how the firearms market in the United States is exploited by would-be mass shooters.

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Evidence New York Violated NRA’s Free Speech

From Breitbart:

In June of 2019, the NRA achieved a breakthrough: in an attempt to negotiate resolution of the NRA’s pending subpoena, Lloyd’s America, Inc. (“LAI”) provided a small number of documents voluntarily to the NRA, subject to a strict confidentiality order. Those documents, and additional details which have come to light since that time, paint a stark and troubling picture of Defendants’ conduct. As described in the NRA’s proposed amended pleading, former DFS Superintendent Vullo was fully aware of identical market conduct by non-NRA entities, yet leveraged DFS’s considerable power over Lloyd’s to inflict harm on “gun programs”—irrespective of whether those programs violated the law. These threats were delivered in off-the-record conversations and surreptitious backroom meetings. Taken aback by such conduct, insurance- industry insiders, including Lloyd’s, privately predicted that the NRA would sue DFS. They were right.

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NJ Now Going After Banks That Do Business With Gun Industry

From The New York Times:

New Jersey intends to stop doing business with gun manufacturers and retailers that fail to adopt policies, like conducting background checks, to stop guns from falling into the wrong hands, becoming the first state to take such stringent action against the firearms industry.
The state will also apply pressure on major financial institutions, seeking information from banks that do business with New Jersey about their relationships and policies involving gun makers and sellers.

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Lawmakers Continue To Go After Banks

From Forbes:

State legislatures, however, are finding ways to pressure banks.  Recently,  California Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles) introduced a resolution to urge  “banks that have open demand accounts with the state to evaluate their relationships with gun manufacturers and adopt lending practices that protect citizens before profits.”  The resolution states the California has “demand accounts with six banks that concurrently lend to gun manufacturers, which are Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Union Bank MUFG, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo & Co.”  According to Kamlager-Dove, “California has more gun laws than any other state in the union.”  Hence, instead of proposing new laws, Kamlager-Dove’s resolution “intends to affect the proliferation of guns by urging six nationally chartered banks to curtail their relationships with gun manufacturers. If major banks refuse to extend credit to gun manufacturers, borrowing costs for gun manufacturers would likely increase, which could reduce industry investment in additional capacity or new business lines.” Moreover, “such a result could reduce the proliferation of guns not only in California, but also across state lines.”

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Citigroup Continues To Discriminate Against Gun Industry

From The Federalist:

Citigroup’s getting asked some hard questions about the fiscal sanity of their decision to discriminate against firearms businesses, and their answers aren’t likely to soothe investors.
Justin Danhof, general counsel for the National Center Public Policy Research and Free Enterprise Project, posed a simple question in a shareholder meeting: “Can you tell us—your investors—exactly how much money we stand to lose because of this decision, and explain why you have this right while Warren Buffet has this wrong?”

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Dem Pressures Bank CEO To Do More On Guns

From Yahoo News:

However, Maloney’s tone shifted when she directed her questions to Dimon. The congresswoman referenced Dimon’s widely read annual letter released last week in which he wrote about JPMorgan having to sometimes turn down clients “with low character” as a way to be a “responsible” bank.
Maloney used excerpts of the letter to grill Dimon, saying that “actions speak louder than words on guns…[and] from what I can tell, these are just words to you.”

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Bill Introduced To Protect Gun Industry Access To Financial Services

From Guns.com:

The proposal, SB 821, was crafted to keep large financial institutions from denying service to constitutionally-protected industries involved in lawful shooting sports. Introduced by North Dakota Republican U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer last week, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La, has signed on as a co-sponsor.

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NYT Wants Credit Cards To Discriminate Against Gun Owners

From Breitbart:

The Times suggests banks are “unwittingly financing mass shootings” by allowing individuals to use their cards to buy firearms and related accessories.

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Crypto Currency For Guns

From Bearing Arms:

Rob McNealy, OCC’s Cofounder, said: “As gun owners, and ardent defenders of the right to self-defense, we know that the gun industry is constantly under attack. We wanted to create a gun-centric crypto to act as a “continuity of business” payment system for gun retailers. Due to their decentralized nature, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies simply can’t be shut down by “activist” banks.”

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Wells Fargo Continues Business With Gun Industry

From Bloomberg:

The San Francisco-based bank last week issued a $40 million line of credit to gun manufacturer Sturm, Ruger & Co., according to financial filings. That’s on top of the $431 million in debt that Wells Fargo has arranged for gunmakers since December 2012, when the Sandy Hook school shooting escalated the gun control debate. No other bank lent more to the industry over that time, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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Bank Cancels Gun Accounts

From The Truth About Guns:

Representatives from Fifth Third Bank visited Spike’s Tactical, a Florida-based firearm manufacturer, last Tuesday to inform them that the bank was discreetly planning to exit the banking sector for gun-related businesses.

According to Spike’s Tactical co-owner Angela Register, the bank representative informed her and their chief financial officer that their business line of credit would not be renewed and encouraged them to find a new bank to hold their accounts, even mentioning that their commercial mortgage should be transferred or it could potentially be called early.

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ACLU Defends NRA In New York Case

From ACLU:

In the ACLU’s view, targeting a nonprofit advocacy group and seeking to deny it financial services because it promotes a lawful activity (the use of guns) violates the First Amendment. Because we believe the governor’s actions, as alleged, threaten the First Amendment rights of all advocacy organizations, the ACLU on Friday filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the NRA’s right to have its day in court.

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Corporate Gun Control

From National Review:

Titans of American banking and communication are taking steps to restrict the use of their funds or platforms by gun makers, gun-rights advocates, and others. The threat is just now emerging, but it may be as great a danger to gun rights as it is to the culture of free speech in this nation, and indeed the two are linked.

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Intuit Continues Assault On Gun Companies

From The Truth About Guns:

Yesterday, I spent time on the phone with Rob Hansel of Lone Wolf Distributors and John Heikkinen of Flint River Armory. The two companies sometimes do business together and recently had a rather large transaction go awry as a result of Intuit QuickBooks’ apparent anti-gun policy. The conversations were both interesting and enlightening, the latter because these issues highlight ongoing business practices with dishonest undertones on the part of Intuit.

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Operation Choke Point Under Scrutiny

From Electronic Frontier Foundation:

EFF recently received dozens of pages of documents in response to a FOIA request we submitted about Operation Choke Point, a Department of Justice project to pressure banks and financial institutions into cutting off service to certain businesses. Unfortunately, the response from the Department of Justice leaves many questions unanswered.

EFF has been tracking instances of financial censorship for years to identify how online speech is indirectly silenced or intimidated by shuttering bank accounts, donation platforms, and other financial institutions.  The Wall Street Journal wrote about the Justice Department’s controversial and secretive campaign against financial institutions in 2013, and one Justice Department official quoted in the article stated:

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