Last month Representative Madeleine Dean and Senator Ed Markey introduced the Gun Violence Prevention Through Financial Intelligence Act. These bills, H.R. 5764 and S. 3117, would force banks to report firearm related purchases to the federal government. These bill compare “suspicious” firearm purchases to human trafficking and money laundering by forcing banks into creating SARs(Suspicious Activity Reports) for those purchases.
These bills undoubtable face issues when it comes to the Second and Fourth Amendment, if this legislation passes there will likely be some serious legal battles in relation to the legislation.
Senator Markey and Representative Dean clearly do not understand that this legislation intersects with the later of these two Amendments as evident by a recent press release. A press release from Representative Madeleine Dean reads:
Under existing regulation financial institutions are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), to raise red flags about money laundering, human trafficking, terrorist financing and other criminal activity. This bill would require FinCEN to collect and analyze data from financial institutions to determine what indicators, if any, might precede a mass shooting or terrorist attack. FinCen would then be required to issue an advisory on how financial institutions should use these indicators to comply with their SAR filings. The bill seeks to determine dangerous financial patterns that may be detectable.
“We need to use every tool at our disposal to help prevent tragic loss of life from gun violence,” Congresswoman Madeleine Dean said. “This bill puts our existing infrastructure for detecting financial crimes to work and seeks to determine if there are patterns of financial behavior that precede mass shootings and terrorist incidents – learning these data points will help us identify and stop gun violence in the future.”
This legislation also comes off the heels of another highly controversial piece of legislation surrounding the financial system. It has become evident that members of Congress do not view your bank account as something private, they view it as something that the federal government should keep tabs on.
The monitoring of everyday Americans’ bank accounts is just one way the gun grabbers in Washington want to shut down 2A. There is a segment of the population that will not buy guns(certainly not legally) if they know it will mean the government will go snooping in their personal finances.
