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Notes -
Major credit card companies are making it easier to track gun sales
It has been a continuing trend, post Heller, that the gun-control activists of the culture war is seeing far more administrative sallies than legislative or judicial wins. This same pattern has recently begun to expand into private enterprise, as noted above.
One does wonder, however, if this is in fact wholly organic activism. The current administration is headed by one of the individuals in office during Operation Choke Point, in which federal agents used back-channel pressure to force payment processors to bend to their will without judicial oversight. This pattern was recently repeated (allegedly) on a wholly different culture war front. Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson claims that the White House was using back-channel demands to twitter employees to ban him from the service.
If this is true, it's an interesting culture war development. "It's a private company" is a common retort by the side in power whenever the side that is not in power complains about corporate censorship. That fact may be true, but in cases like Operation Choke Point, the State Actor concept starts to rear its ugly head. How much pressure can the government apply before the "private companies" in question are acting under duress, and as such, acting as state actors? How naked must the threats be before it's a demand, rather than a friendly suggestion?
Some past conversation on this topic. I'll also point to the Times in terms of where gun control advocates want this to go next:
And, more subtly :
Senator Warren, while better known for a hilarious incident involving a genetics testing kit, is also a member of the Senate Banking Committee, and chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Policy.
And an absolute inveterate powermonger. She's the type of progressive who would have sided with the original technocrats more than a century ago: She believes wholeheartedly in the unlimited good that smart, well-educated, well-intentioned people can do when given as much power as they want to accomplish that good.
When designing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her bill intentionally placed it in the Federal Reserve -- which is self-funding -- so that Congress could not ever defund it. This was also the bill that created an appointed administrator for the CFPB who could not be removed by subsequent Presidents, something that was struck down as unconstitutional.
If she's involved with this, it is not a benign change.
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