Montini: Should Visa deny AR-15 purchases?

EJ Montini
The Republic | azcentral.com
This shows an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in Berryville, Virginia. The same gun type used in the Florida shooting.

The Republican-controlled Congress is bought and paid for by the gun lobby and won’t do anything meaningful when it comes to gun regulations no matter how many mass shootings there are or who gets killed -- grown-ups, high-school students or first graders.

But some big businesses are coming around.

DICK’S Sporting Goods led the way, saying it would no longer sell firearms to anyone under 21; will no longer sell assault-style rifles or high capacity magazines to anyone, and won’t ever peddle bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire like automatics.

Will credit card companies follow?

Walmart followed suit, announcing that in addition to its previous  decision to not sell “modern sporting rifles” it was raising the age for the purchase of firearms and ammunition from 18 to 21 and “removing online items resembling assault-style rifles.”

L.L. Bean joined in.

Retail activists have boldly gone where weak-kneed politicians fear to tread.

But what about the big credit card companies?

A collectives of activists from the Courage Campaign, Ultraviolet, and Daily Kos recently delivered petitions with 144,000 signatures to Visa offices outside of San Francisco asking Visa and other credit card companies to follow the lead of payment processors like PayPal and ban gun purchases from their service.

Visa issued a statement saying, “We do not believe Visa should be in the position of setting restrictions on the sale of lawful goods and services.”

Nita Chaudhary, Co-founder of UltraViolet, said of that decision:

 “Visa’s refusal to consider customer demands to help curb the epidemic of gun violence in this country by blocking sales of assault weapons is shameful. … Companies across the country have stepped up, raising age limits to purchase guns or ending the sales of assault weapons entirely. These companies recognize the dangers that assault weapons pose and understand that they have an ethical duty to take action and help protect customers and the American public at large.

“Visa’s claim that they do not believe in setting restrictions on the sale of ‘lawful goods and services’ rings hollow, as the company already blocks the sales of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. We will keep pushing Visa to prioritize lives over profits.“

Activists aren't buying excuses

The activists also released  a letter from domestic abuse survivors that was sent to the heads of Visa and Mastercard that read I part: We write to you because, while Congress and the president do nothing, there are specific steps your company can take to ban the sale of military-style assault rifles used in the deadliest mass shootings. … If you can block the sale of Bitcoin, you can block the weapon of choice for mass murderers. People's lives are on the line. We urge you to stop processing sales from retailers who sell assault weapons.”

It wouldn’t be an easy thing for the credit card companies to do.

And, as one analyst of such payments told MarketWatch, “If the past shines any light on the present, nothing will be done at the commercial level to shut down sales of weapons of the kind used at the Florida high school. As long as they are legal, some company will handle the business.”

Maybe.

No excuse for doing the wrong thing

But why not at least try to do the right thing?

After all, the most pitifully immoral excuse for an immoral choice – whether in business, politics or personal life -- is:

If we don’t do it someone else will.

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