The House passed legislation prohibiting payment card networks from flagging lawful firearm transactions, a bill nearly every Democrat voted against, despite years of evidence that financial surveillance of gun owners is already underway.

H.R. 1181, the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act, cleared the chamber on a 221, 201 vote Tuesday, with Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia, the bill's Republican sponsor, calling it a necessary check on what he described as an unconstitutional backdoor gun registry built through credit card transaction data. The Daily Caller reported that just five Democrats crossed party lines to support the measure: Henry Cuellar of Texas, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, and Adam Gray of California.

The bill bars payment card networks from assigning specific merchant category codes, known as MCCs, to track lawful gun transactions or to identify firearm retailers. The fight dates to September 2022, when a firearms-specific MCC was implemented, raising alarms among Second Amendment groups that credit card companies could compile purchase records amounting to a de facto registry of gun owners.

Five Democrats broke ranks, the rest stayed silent on financial surveillance

The five Democrats who voted yes also supported a procedural motion to recommit, siding briefly with their party before ultimately backing final passage. Breitbart reported the full breakdown: 215 Republicans, five Democrats, and one Independent voted in favor, while 201 members voted against.

That means the overwhelming majority of the Democratic caucus opposed a bill whose core function is preventing private companies from building surveillance databases of Americans exercising a constitutional right. No Republican "no" votes were identified in the reporting.

The bill was introduced on February 12, 2025, and its passage came after major credit card companies, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover, had previously agreed to flag gun and ammunition purchases through the new MCC before public backlash forced them to pause those plans. The legislation would make that pause permanent.

Moore: 'The Second Amendment is not a second-class right'

Moore framed the vote as a defense of both gun rights and financial privacy. In a statement posted to X following the vote, he laid out the stakes plainly:

"The Second Amendment is not a second-class right. Americans should never have their lawful firearm purchases tracked by financial institutions or payment processors."

He went further, pointing to the origins of the MCC push. Moore described the broader pattern of institutional pressure on gun owners and singled out Amalgamated Bank, which he called "Democrat-affiliated," as the entity that drove the creation of a separate code for gun stores.

"The creation of a separate merchant category code for gun stores at the behest of the Democrat-affiliated Amalgamated Bank opens the door to creating an unconstitutional backdoor gun registry and discrimination against law-abiding gun owners."

Moore added that his bill "stops this dangerous overreach, protects consumers' financial privacy, and ensures that a backdoor federal gun registry can never be created through credit card transaction data."

Pro-Second Amendment groups lined up behind the bill, and pointed to past abuses

The National Shooting Sports Foundation's Mark Oliva, the group's managing director of public affairs, thanked the House for what he called a "bipartisan vote" and connected the MCC issue to a longer history of government and corporate efforts to squeeze the firearms industry through financial channels.

Oliva told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the plan to collect firearm purchase history "was hatched by Amalgamated Bank and Andrew Ross Sorkin as an underhanded means to force gun control outside of legislative channels through 'woke' corporate policies." He noted that 20 states have already enacted similar protections, while three states, California, Colorado, and New York, went the opposite direction, requiring MCCs to be collected and used to monitor legal firearm and ammunition purchases.

He also raised a more serious charge. Oliva said former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen "dodged Congress's questions" about whether the Biden administration was illegally collecting firearm transaction data from lawful buyers. Days later, he said, Biden's Treasury Department admitted to Sen. Tim Scott that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN, the Treasury sub-agency responsible for tracking suspicious financial activity, had in fact "illegally surveilled Americans purchasing firearms and ammunition."

Those claims remain Oliva's characterization; the underlying documentation was not detailed in the reporting. But the accusation fits a pattern that gun-rights advocates have tracked for years, one in which federal agencies and allied financial institutions use regulatory pressure rather than legislation to restrict firearms access. Congressional voting dynamics on surveillance-related issues have produced unexpected fault lines even within the Republican conference.

From Operation Chokepoint to credit card codes, the playbook hasn't changed

The bill's supporters see H.R. 1181 as the latest chapter in a decade-long fight. Under the Obama administration, the FDIC, the agency that insures bank deposits, ran what became known as "Operation Chokepoint," pressuring banks to deny financial services to firearms industry companies. The first Trump administration halted the program, but some financial institutions continued to squeeze gun-related businesses for years afterward.

In 2018, the NRA sued then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo after his administration used the threat of "reputational risk" investigations to coerce banks and financial services companies into cutting ties with the organization. That lawsuit underscored a tactic that gun-rights groups say has migrated from government agencies to corporate boardrooms and back again, always aimed at making it harder for lawful Americans to buy firearms without leaving a trail.

Taylor Rhodes, the National Association for Gun Rights' director of communications, framed the bill in those terms before the vote. He told the Daily Caller News Foundation that "the feds have no business building a financial surveillance system to track what law-abiding Americans buy, especially when those purchases involve the exercise of a constitutional right."

"Our position is simple: buying a firearm, ammunition, or gun-related product from any business should not turn an average citizen into a target for banks, credit card companies, activist bureaucrats, or anti-gun politicians."

The NRA's lobbying arm, the NRA-ILA, echoed that concern. It said the bill "would prevent a backdoor registry of law-abiding gun owners by credit card companies which could then be accessed by the federal government and even third parties like gun control groups." The NRA itself did not respond to a request for comment on the vote, nor did Gun Owners of America.

Senate prospects remain unclear as constitutional battles continue

H.R. 1181 now moves to the Senate, where its path is uncertain. The reporting did not identify whether Senate leadership has scheduled the bill for consideration, and the slim margins in the upper chamber could make passage more difficult, particularly if Democrats hold the same line they held in the House.

The five Democrats who crossed over, Cuellar, Gluesenkamp Perez, Davis, Golden, and Gray, represent districts where gun ownership and privacy concerns carry real political weight. Their votes may reflect constituent pressure more than any ideological shift within the party. The rest of the caucus voted no, a reminder that Democratic leadership remains willing to oppose even modest protections for gun owners' financial privacy.

When the government can't pass a gun registry through the front door, it shouldn't be allowed to build one through your credit card statement. Most House Democrats apparently disagree.