Gun rights advocates warned that a new change to the credit card industry to add a firearm and ammunition-specific Merchant Category Code (MCC) for gun stores wasn’t about tracking guns necessarily, but could lead to the denial of lawful firearms purchases by law-abiding citizens.
In September, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express all said they would adopt the MCC code to categorize sales at gun shops; months later, several social media posts of alleged gun stores and customers claim they experienced card issues.
Twitter account “Battlecock Tactical” tweeted, “Federal Firearms License [gun shop] in a Facebook group shared this. Looks like the doomers accurately called how that new firearms merchant code would go down.”
Battlecock Tactical’s images show what appears to be a retail POS system at an FFL that reads $913.70 transaction was “declined.” The error code on the merchant’s computer read:
“Transaction declined: Charge declined RESTRICTED CARD Customer bank does not allow this card to be used at this type of merchant.”
Hellbound and Down 