03/22/2021 / By JD Heyes
One of the worst abuses of power during the Obama regime was his administration’s weaponization of federal financial regulatory agencies against law-abiding businesses that were hated by the left.
They included gun stores and makers, payday loan lenders, pawn shops, and other mom-and-pop shops that Obama just didn’t like.
His regime targeted those owners through a program called “Operation Choke Point,” which then-President Donald Trump ended shortly after he took office.
In fact, his Justice Department declared the program “formally over” in 2017, and before Trump left office, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a “Fair Access” rule that instructed large banks to ensure they provide equal access to financial services for businesses and individuals regardless of political considerations.
But lo and behold, Joe Biden’s left-wing handlers have instructed the OCC to forestall the rule with, it looks like, an eye toward reviving it — which means the very same businesses, but especially gun stores and gun makers, are going to be targeted once again by anti-Second Amendment Marxists in his regime.
This time, however, if banks shut their doors to gun dealers and makers, one man hopes to offer them a financial alternative: Cryptocurrency.
Since Democrats took full control of the government last month, a proposed rule that would protect businesses such as the firearms industry has been scuttled, opening the possibility that companies will see their financial services cut off. Rob McNealy, a Second Amendment supporter, created the Universal Settlement Coin (TUSC), a cryptocurrency that focuses on providing the firearms industry with a tool that would allow gun stores and firearm-related manufacturers to provide goods and services completely outside of the banking industry.
Increasingly, cryptocurrencies are gaining favor with people who don’t want to be targeted or abused by traditional financial institutions, all of which seem to believe these days that some people don’t deserve to function in our society.
They are ideal for libertarians and individualists, then, because they operate completely free of legacy financial organs like banks and savings and loans. As such, people who use cryptocurrencies can’t be ‘canceled’ by banks and left-wing presidents. (Related: Sheila Jackson-Lee demands a national gun ownership database that would expose your home address to criminals nearby.)
In fact, it was Operation Choke Point that drove McNealy to develop his TUSC, the Free Beacon reported, because even though Trump ended the program, many banks continued to illegally deny services to gun owners because they were being pressured by anti-gun activists.
“No one thought we’d see the de-platforming we do today,” McNealy said.
Spike Tactical, a Florida gunmaker, was one company that was impacted by Operation Choke Point fanaticism. The business was kicked off of its e-commerce supplier, Shopify, and was informed by its bank to find another financial services provider.
Cryptocurrencies will help him stay in business and avoid the targeting.
“I’d urge a lot of the gun companies to look at crypto,” Leleux said.
McNealy added that his coin is really suited for brick-and-mortar businesses because transfers are easy and transaction fees are stable.
Gun stores really took it on the chin during the Obama years.
“We’re being threatened with a regulatory regime that attempts to foist on us the obligation to monitor all types of transactions, predicated on the notion that the banks are a choke point for all businesses,” American Bankers Association Senior Vice President Richard Riese said in May 2014.
“We are one of the most heavily regulated industries in America,” Joe Sirochman of American Spirit Arms in Scottsdale, Ariz., told the Washington Times. “We have to ship our guns to another federally licensed dealer for pickup. The people who pick up the rifles have to go through a background check to make sure they don’t have any felonies. You can’t own a gun or pass the background check if you do.”
See more reporting like this at Guns.news.
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bankers, banks, barack obama, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, financial institutional, Gun Dealers, gun makers, Joe Biden, lenders, Operation Choke Point, pawn shops, punish
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