Second Amendment supporters and law-abiding gun owners can breathe a sigh of relief. For now, at least. The four major credit card companies – American Express, VISA, Mastercard and Discover – all announced they were “pausing” efforts to implement a newly-created Merchant Category Code (MCC) to track gun store purchases.

NSSF worked diligently with lawmakers in several states and the federal government last year when the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted a credit card tracking scheme proposed by antigun activists at Amalgamated Bank and The New York Times. The result is several states are on the verge of passing legislation that would block the use of firearm retailer-specific code and protect the privacy of customers of firearm retailers, including West Virginia, Florida and Mississippi. Congress is also looking at the issue.

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