Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
By Larry Keane
The Treasury Department’s latest accusation against laws protecting Americans and American businesses against “woke” discrimination would be absurd if it wasn’t so serious.
Treasury officials – the same ones that illegally spied-and-lied on law-abiding Americans purchasing firearms and ammunition – are warning that laws like Florida’s HB 3 are a threat to national security. That’s the law Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed that prevents “woke” corporations with discriminatory policies against firearm industry members and other businesses from collecting taxpayer dollars through state contracts and pensions. He followed that up by signing HB 989, that creates a complaint process for customers who feel they’ve been politically discriminated against by financial institutions.
Now, Treasury officials are warning that it could limit their efforts to track and prevent money laundering and terrorism financing. The Treasury Department didn’t make mention of other states with similar laws, including Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana or South Dakota.
Financial Discrimination
These are efforts NSSF has backed through the Firearm Industry Nondiscrimination (FIND) Act. Those are a series of state laws that say corporations that discriminate against firearm-related businesses solely because they are in the business of selling firearms, ammunition or firearm accessories are ineligible to receive taxpayer funded contracts. There is pending legislation in Congress too. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) introduced the NSSF-supported FIND Act as S. 428 and U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.) introduced similar legislation, H.R. 53, under the same name.
The Treasury Department’s warning claimed that Florida’s law increases “the risk that international drug traffickers, transnational organized criminals, terrorists, and corrupt foreign officials will use the U.S. financial system to launder money, evade sanctions, and threaten our national security.”
That Treasury warning was in response to a July 8 request from Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) to learn of concerns to combat federal anti-money laundering and terrorist networks. Rep. Luetkemeyer, in particular, has been a harsh critic of banks being driven by political ideologies. He was the Member of Congress that blew the lid on the Obama administration’s illegal Operation Choke Point, that saw the Justice Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) team up to deny financial services to firearm businesses. Rep. Luetkemeyer recently signed on as a co-sponsor of the Fair Access to Banking Act, H.R. 2742, introduced by Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) that addresses “woke” banking that discriminates against the firearms and other industries disfavored by “Wall Street” elites like J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimond.
The irony isn’t lost on the firearm industry. The warning that laws discouraging banks from discriminating against firearm manufacturers threatens national security is laughable. The firearm industry is essential to national security. Firearm manufacturers, distributors and retailers not only provide the means for law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, but they also provide the tools necessary for law enforcement agencies to protect communities. The U.S. military purchases firearms and ammunition from U.S.-based firearm manufactures to – quite literally – provide for the national security of the United States.
If corporations, including corporate banks, were given free reign to pick their own winners and losers in business based on “woke” ideologies like gun control, those firearm manufacturers would be starved of the financial services they need to compete in the marketplace. They wouldn’t be able to produce the legal products they sell not just to law-abiding citizens but also to the law enforcement agencies and U.S. military that relies on these tools to protect communities and the nation.
Treasury Spied-and-Lied
It’s not just that, though. This is the same Treasury Department that spied-and-lied on Americans for exercising their Second Amendment rights. The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) admitted to Sen. Scott (R-S.C.) in a letter that it violated the Fourth Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens that protect against illegal search and seizure when it collected the credit card purchase history from banks and credit card companies of individuals who purchased firearms and ammunition in the days surrounding Jan. 6, 2020. Treasury’s FinCEN had no probable cause, and sought the information without a warrant, to place these law-abiding citizens on a government watchlist only because they exercised their Second Amendment rights to lawfully purchase firearms and ammunition.
The admission came days after Treasury Secretary Yellen faced grilling by House of Representatives and Senate committees, during which she dodged direct questions of the illegal search-and-seizure of private financial transactions. The day after the admission, FinCEN officials again dodged questions from Congress.
Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) explained in a February Financial Services Committee hearing that the Treasury Department’s admission it illegally spied on private accounts smacked of the ill-fated and illegal Operation Choke Point. Only now, that effort is targeting the private financial transactions of Americans.
“That doesn’t matter what the what the name is,” Rep. Huizenga said. “It’s the action of that I’m very concerned about FinCEN, providing financial institutions with quote suggested search terms and merchant category codes that would be used to identify transactions.”
Rep. Huizenga directly addressed FinCEN’s spying by surveilling Americans who purchase firearms and ammunition or shopped at Cabela’s or Dick’s Sporting Goods.
“I shop at Cabela’s. I buy ammo. Am I on a list somehow?” Rep. Huizenga asked. “That… that’s what a lot of people, including myself, are asking when we’ve heard this. Your agency was created to protect Americans and our national security, not to spy on them.”
Laws protecting against “woke” Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies aren’t a threat to national security. Banks should be banks, not an extension of special-interest agendas bent on forcing through policies that deny essential financial services to entire sectors of business that legally produce and sell their products to law-abiding citizens. The threat to national security doesn’t come from laws that prevent these illegal policies. The threat comes from government agencies wielding unchecked authority to diminish – or even eliminate – the rights belonging to the people and protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Larry Keane is Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.
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