United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- The news that some states are punishing big banks who engage in corporate gun control is good news. But I hope loyal Ammoland readers will forgive me for only offering one cheer. Why?
Because we should not be celebrating half-measures against an existential threat. The cold, hard, truth is that financial deplatforming is an existential threat to our Second Amendment rights and needs to be treated as such.
Losing the chance to underwrite a $3.3 billion bond offering might sound impressive, but JP Morgan Chase has a net worth of just over $475 billion – almost 144 times the size of the bond issue discussed. It has over $2.6 trillion in assets. That bond offering that Chase lost is a shot glass compared to a 55-gallon drum just in terms of money. Let’s face it, if we want to stop financial deplatforming, we need more than sub-pinprick consequences.
When you have companies willing to engage in corporate gun control, abuses like Operation Chokepoint are not that necessary – at least for a while. So, Second Amendment supporters need to come up with ways to make redlining the Second Amendment more painful than going along with anti-Second Amendment extremism.
For starters, Second Amendment supporters should push for their state legislatures to pass state-level versions of the Freedom Financing Act, with larger civil penalties, adding a private course of action to allow those targeted to sue and recover damages, and disqualifying those banks from doing any business with state governments.
The next step is to take on the tech companies like PayPal, Square, and others who engage in corporate gun control. Again, a mix of civil penalties and allowing for private causes of action would be a way to deter such discrimination.
A third step will be to also go after those who incite such corporate gun control. In this case, there is a federal statute that can help. Under 42 USC 1985, there is a civil cause for action for “conspiracy to interfere with civil rights.” State legislatures could pass resolutions that call financial deplatforming a form of interference with the right to keep and bear arms, which is protected by the Heller and McDonald rulings.
Much of this centers around civil litigation. This may be seen as a long shot by some loyal Ammoland readers, but a large enough civil litigation campaign could be enough to force the big banks to reconsider going along with corporate gun control. The Tampa Bay Times wrote of how a civil litigation campaign beat the IRS. Anti-Second Amendment extremists like Andrew Cuomo once tried a similar plan to coerce gun manufacturers into going along with gun control. Turnabout is more than fair play.
Second Amendment supporters need to recognize the reality about the existential threat that financial deplatforming poses to our right to keep and bear arms. They need to work hard to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box at the federal, state, and local levels as soon as possible, but they also need those they elect to address this existential threat head-on without settling for half-measures.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.
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