Banks and Payment Processors Drop Gun Retailers Following Government Pressure Precedent
In 2018, citing Operation Choke Point precedents and regulatory pressure, major financial institutions including Citibank and Bank of America announced policies restricting services to firearms retailers — moves that gun industry advocates argued were directly enabled and encouraged by years of federal regulatory pressure on banks to avoid gun-related businesses.
In March 2018, in the wake of the Parkland school shooting, Citibank announced it would require retail clients to refuse sales of firearms to customers under 21 and to ban bump stocks. Bank of America announced it would stop lending to manufacturers of military-style firearms for civilian use. Multiple smaller banks and payment processors restricted or terminated accounts for gun dealers, retailers, and manufacturers. The National Shooting Sports Foundation and numerous gun dealers sued or complained to federal regulators, arguing the policies had been directly enabled by the Obama-era Operation Choke Point program, which had effectively taught financial institutions that declining gun-related business was regulatorily safe. Congressional Republicans argued the debanking constituted viewpoint-based discrimination carried out by private actors under government pressure — a theory that gained legal traction in light of the contemporaneous Murthy v. Missouri litigation over government-platform coordination. Several state attorneys general opened investigations and some states passed laws prohibiting financial institutions from discriminating on the basis of firearms-related lawful commerce.