Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HILL of Arkansas. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1423, I call up the bill (H.R. 1181) to prohibit payment card networks and covered entities from requiring the use of or assigning merchant category codes that distinguish a firearms retailer from general- merchandise retailer or sporting-goods retailer, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of Mr. Moore's Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act.

Financial privacy is fundamental to consumer trust and confidence in our financial system. As technology continues to transform financial services, protecting Americans' financial privacy remains an essential part of Congress' oversight role.

Merchant category codes were designed to help process transactions, not create mechanisms for tracking or categorizing lawful purchases. Maintaining trust in the payment system requires clear safeguards to ensure that these tools are used for commerce, not consumer surveillance.

H.R. 1181 establishes those safeguards by preventing payment card networks and processors from using merchant category codes to target firearms retailers and their customers. The Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act provides important protections for consumers by preventing the misuse of payment systems to monitor lawful purchasing activity.

Consumers should not have to sacrifice their financial privacy in order to participate in our modern economy. Protecting financial privacy helps reinforce confidence in the institutions and infrastructure that our payment systems operate around.

Americans should be able to participate in the economy with confidence that their lawful transactions are simply being processed, not tracked or categorized or scrutinized beyond what is never necessary to essentially facilitate the payment. This bill helps preserve the integrity of that payment system by keeping it focused on facilitating commerce and efficient movement of funds.

Importantly, this bill does not interfere with any existing law enforcement authorities, anti-money laundering requirements, fraud prevention efforts, or other obligations designed to protect consumers and safeguard our financial system.

H.R. 1181 is a commonsense measure that simply safeguards financial privacy while maintaining the integrity of our Nation's payment network.

I urge all my colleagues to support the legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MOORE of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, H.R. 1181, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act. My bill preserves two fundamental rights: the right to privacy and the right to bear arms. Americans should not be forced to disclose to payment processors when they buy firearms.

The bill preserves Americans' rights by prohibiting the creation of a separate merchant category code for firearms. This would, of course, become a de facto gun registry. The bill also preempts harmful State laws and gives the Attorney General authority to take any bank or payment processor that assigns or requires a separate code to Federal court.

For too long, the American people have had their rights undermined by the radical left. The bill's premise is simple: no gun registries, period. In fact, this very body has twice prohibited these unjust registries, once in 1986 and again in 1993, to prohibit the left from destroying Americans' rights.

However, the gun-grabbing left never stops trying. In 2021, the progressive Amalgamated Bank lobbied the International Organization for Standardization to create a separate merchant category code for firearm retailers to advance a backdoor gun registry. Previously, these retailers had always been accurately categorized as miscellaneous retail stores or sporting goods stores.

Amalgamated Bank was hell-bent on tracking firearm purchases. It pressured a faceless, unaccountable, foreign standards body in Geneva to stand up a new merchant category code explicitly targeting American gun owners and American businesses. When I was State treasurer in West Virginia, we said ``no'' to the gun-grabbing progressive bank partnering with a European NGO destroying American rights.

Under my leadership as State treasurer, West Virginia enacted one of the first bans on separate merchant category codes for firearms retailers, protecting the privacy of our State's gun owners. Nineteen States after that followed suit.

However, a patchwork of State regulations is not enough. California, Colorado, and New York currently mandate that firearm stores have a separate merchant category code, creating a de facto registry in some of the most populous States in our country. This cannot be allowed to stand. We have already seen the Biden administration pressure financial institutions to hand over data on their customers. A private database of gun owners falling into the hands of a future anti-gun administration is a threat that we cannot accept.

Our God-given right to own a firearm does not stop at the border of blue States.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, Representatives Barr and Hudson, for their work on this bill. I also thank Chairman Hill for getting it across the finish line. I also thank Representative Stefanik for her leadership on this issue.

These are our God-given rights, spelled out in our Constitution, and we proudly exercise them. We will not allow an elitist bank partnered with a foreign, faceless bureaucracy to rob Americans of their right to protect themselves. In West Virginia, we don't ask permission to protect ourselves and our families, and no American should ever have to wonder whether buying a firearm will land them on a government watch list. Privacy and gun ownership go hand in hand.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill.

This is not about crime. It is about control. Once you can flag a purchase, any purchase, you can flag a person. Once you can flag a person, you can control what they buy, what banks they use, and even what they believe. It is wrong. It is un-American.

This bill is not just about guns. It is about the precedent that was set. If we allow financial institutions to become the surveillance arm of one party's political agenda today, there will be no limit to what gets flagged tomorrow.

Let me be clear: Buying a firearm is not extremism; buying a Bible is not extremism; reading the news you choose and want to read is not extremism; exercising a constitutional right is not extremism.

The extreme position is using America's banks to build a permanent list to track who people worship, what they read, and what constitutional rights they happen to choose to exercise.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for privacy, freedom, and the Constitution of the United States of America.

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Mr. HILL of Arkansas. Lee).

I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for this debate. I thank Mr. Moore for writing this bill, drafting it, persuading the support that he has. I urge all Members on both sides of the aisle to support this bill in the name of privacy in the United States.

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