Visa, Mastercard, Amex Urged to Track Gun Sales to Fight Crime

Representatives for the credit-card corporations didn’t reply to requests for remark.

The proposal, if adopted, may develop the compliance expectations for monetary establishments. They are already required to flag suspicious conduct to strive to cease cash laundering and terrorism, as Mr. Bonta and Ms. James famous. In the long run, monetary establishments may assist forestall mass shootings, gun-driven home terrorism and weapons trafficking, the attorneys normal mentioned.

The lawyer generals’ exhortation comes after the Supreme Court in late June struck down New York state’s system for issuing concealed-weapons permits, which required that candidates show “proper cause” and “good moral character.” New York state lawmakers shortly afterward passed legislation reinstating elements of the system and prohibiting the possession of weapons in a listing of “sensitive places,” amongst different restrictions.

The two officers are pushing for a technical change within the standardized four-digit codes credit-card corporations use to establish retailers. Adding what is called a service provider class code for gun shops would facilitate the flagging of suspicious patterns of transactions, they mentioned.

Right now, gun shops aren’t handled as a separate class of retailers, although the credit-card corporations assign discrete service provider class codes to grocery shops and bicycle outlets, for instance.

“If tracking MCCs could stop just one mass shooting or derail one gun trafficker aiming to flood the streets with guns, the change would be justified,” the 2 wrote.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, and different metropolis officers made an identical demand to the three credit-card corporations earlier this week. That transfer drew plaudits from a number of gun-control organizations.

The MCC codes are set by an International Organization for Standardization committee that’s scheduled to meet in Oslo in November.

“Implying that firearm purchases are suspicious demonstrates an obvious bias these attorneys general hold against anyone choosing to exercise a fundamental constitutional right,” mentioned National Rifle Association spokesman Lars Dalseide mentioned.

Todd Raque, an anti-money-laundering professional at Featurespace Ltd., a maker of financial-crime-detection software program, mentioned that companies concerned in processing funds are extra flippantly regulated than banks, with their programs at present centered on stopping fraud.

Mr. Raque predicted that some financial-services corporations may strive to combat any transfer that may add to their compliance burden, and mentioned that monitoring programs now in place wouldn’t enable any sort of real-time disruption of crime.

“If somebody’s building an arsenal for some kind of a domestic incident, or a mass shooting, the whole system’s not really geared toward that,” he mentioned. “But to me [this] sounds like a good step in the right direction.”

Write to Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com