{"id":116402,"date":"2026-04-24T15:42:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T20:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=116402"},"modified":"2026-04-24T15:42:59","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T20:42:59","slug":"116402","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=116402","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Final Rule Drives a Stake Through Anti-Gun Left\u2019s De-Banking Strategy.<\/a><\/p>\n

The decades long discriminatory tension between the financial sector and the firearm industry underwent a positive shift with a\u00a0final rule<\/a>\u00a0published on April 10 by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This landmark effort in a long fought battle, which\u00a0NRA-ILA<\/a>\u00a0has\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0on extensively, codifies the removal of \u201creputation risk\u201d as a basis of adverse action under oversight programs that apply to FDIC-supervised financial institutions.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, this final rule eliminates reputation risk as a means of injecting politics into banking regulation by prohibiting examiners from using this subjective assessment to pressure or penalize banks. It also prohibits regulators from pushing banks to close accounts or deny services based on their ill-conceived aversion to the lawful firearms and ammunition industries, which are vital to supporting our constitutional rights.<\/p>\n

This rule helps to mitigate unjustified biases against these business sectors left over from the\u00a0Obama-Biden Administration<\/a>\u00a0and importantly helps to prevent future efforts in the same vein. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice, in coordination with regulators such as the FDIC, began\u00a0pressuring banks<\/a>\u00a0to cut ties and services to industries they considered to be \u201chigh risk,\u201d which under the anti-gun Obama-Biden administration unsurprisingly included firearm and ammunition-related business.re<\/p>\n

The program, billed\u00a0Operation Choke Point<\/a>, encouraged broad financial \u201cde-risking\u201d and led to banks freezing or terminating services to lawful businesses based on \u201creputation risk,\u201d instead of any proven misconduct or illegality. Guidance documents provided to banks at the time specifically listed firearm and ammunition sales as high-risk activity, although they are some of the most highly regulated industries in the country.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

OCP\u2019s circular reasoning held that even law-abiding businesses could generate ill-will among banking customers, merely because of the controversial nature of those businesses\u2019 products or services. Thus, to prevent some customers from canceling their banking relationships out of protest or disgust that businesses they didn\u2019t like were also being served, banks were supposed to sever ties with those businesses. Meanwhile, the administration did all it could to stoke this same ill-will by portraying these \u201csuspect\u201d industries in a relentlessly negative light.<\/p>\n

In 2017, President Trump officially ended Operation Choke Point, with the\u00a0DOJ issuing a missive<\/a>\u00a0characterizing it as a \u201cmisguided initiative\u201d and conceding that \u201claw abiding businesses should not be targeted simply for operating in an industry that a particular administration might not favor.\u201d And while it was noted that the initiative would not be undertaken again, there was still work to be done to strengthen protections for the industry and prevent similar back-door discriminatory efforts in the future. Among these, for example, are various attempts to\u00a0surveille firearm and ammunition-related purchases<\/a>\u00a0through credit card companies, supposedly to flag \u201csuspicious\u201d purchases to regulators.<\/p>\n

Last year, in acknowledging the continued threats of financial discrimination, President Trump took more decisive steps by issuing an executive order,\u00a0Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans<\/a>, emphasizing that lawful individuals and businesses should not be denied access to financial services due to ideological bias. The order also called for greater oversight and accountability to prevent discriminatory debanking practices.<\/p>\n

In response to the executive order, the OCC was directed to conduct a supervisory review of nine of the largest national banks, and its\u00a0published preliminary findings<\/a>\u00a0confirmed that the \u00a0these nine banks made inappropriate distinctions among customers and identified instances where \u201cat least one bank imposed restrictions on certain industry sectors because they engaged in \u201cactivities that, while not illegal, are contrary to [the bank\u2019s] values.\u201d The sectors subjected to restricted access included oil and gas exploration, coal mining, and firearms, among others.<\/p>\n

When a new regulatory rule was proposed to deal with this situation late last year,\u00a0NRA-ILA submitted supportive comments<\/a>\u00a0and now welcomes the finalized version, which includes the following\u00a0highlights<\/a>:<\/p>\n