‘Progressive’ Bank Developing ‘Department of Precrime’ ‘Snitchware’ on Gun Owners

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Banks are developing technology to identify potential mass shooters, according to a CEO backing the push to get credit-card companies to more closely track gun purchases,” Daily Business Review claims.  Or rather, Bloomberg News (!), which provided this propaganda piece, does.

“‘Detection scenarios’ are in the works that, if triggered, would prompt banks to file a Suspicious Activity Report to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,” the story elaborates, citing Amalgamated Bank Chief Executive Officer Priscilla Sims Brown.

Brown did not identify the psychic technology that will allow Amalgamated to reliably predict future probabilities accurately enough to justify reporting citizens to law enforcement for investigation — that is, to activate authorities to punish based on a belief in magic, just like the witch trials of old.  But we do know from past media statements the types of thresholds she envisions.

“Software would be able to detect, for example, if someone spent $1,000 at a firearm store, and on the same day, received a $1,000 deposit from someone who is not legally allowed to purchase firearms themselves,” she advocated, as quoted in my August Firearms News report.

“The software would know ‘prohibited person’ status? How?” I asked at the time. “Are banks now going to tap into NICS and perform after-the-fact ‘background checks? How is such data sharing with private parties authorized by law?”

Especially since we’re told, “The merchant code doesn’t go to the SKU [Stock Keeping Unit] level.” So now we see the plan is to create soothsaying algorithms and use those to go running to the authorities.

What could go wrong?

If we’re talking about stopping a mass shooter before he can act, time is of the essence. An immediate and forceful law enforcement deployment hardly seems a far-fetched police response, especially with high-profile embarrassments over inaction like Parkland and Uvalde giving all the incentive needed to not want to be the goats on another incident. What are they going to say if something happens on their watch and the banks are out there lamenting “We TOLD them” to the media?

But what happens when it turns out to be a “false positive”? After all, no less an “authority” than the State of California Department of Justice, with law enforcement visibility and a criminal record database greater and more specific than anything Amalgamated Bank is going to feed into its fortune teller machine just recently denied a sale to a longtime gun owner and concealed carry permit holder, and then a few days later, with his purchase still on hold, allowed his ammo purchase to go through.

And what happens if the police show up at a “detection scenario” subject’s house and, following the prime directive of making it home at the end of their shift above all else, open fire on and kill the poor guy, as happened recently in Austin? If it turns out to be an “Oops, our bad!” situation, will Amalgamated (and any bank using its software as a reporting “trigger”) share in the liability?

You know and I know (and the calculating minds behind this know) that impossible-to-achieve clairvoyance will end up preventing no mass shootings. The only ones who don’t know that are the willfully self-deluded useful idiots eager to lemming up for whatever abrogation of rights they’re being instructed to demand. Anyone disarmed (and without due process!) who is an actual danger will still be a danger if he’s not also separated from the potential victim pool. “Gun control” schemes don’t work and this one certainly won’t. And don’t forget, it’s the antis insisting to have it both ways by also claiming it’s easier to get a gun than it is a book or a vegetable.

For some reason, the IT term “GIGO” (Garbage In, Garbage Out) comes to mind. That and Priscilla Sims Brown sitting at her desk in a trance asking, “Magic 8 Ball: Should I report this purchase to the feds?” and then acting on its response.

The other thing that comes to mind is the dystopian Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report:

“In the year 2054 A.D. crime is virtually eliminated from Washington D.C. thanks to an elite law enforcing squad ‘Precrime’. They use three gifted humans (called ‘Pre-Cogs’) with special powers to see into the future and predict crimes beforehand.”

Since it’s unlikely Sims Brown has a trio of mutants isolated in a photon milk bath at corporate HQ, how Amalgamated justifies acting on its “snitchware” (yeah, it’s a real neologism) is unclear unless you compare what they’re doing to a real crime, which depriving citizens of rights without due process has heretofore been considered. They have the means and they’re creating the opportunity. All that’s left is to discern their motive.

As we saw in an August AmmoLand report:

“Amalgamated, majority owned by Workers United, ‘has aggressively carved out a position as the left’s private banker, leveraging deep connections with the Democratic establishment.’ Workers United, in turn, is a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate, which, per The Washington Free Beacon, ‘rakes in millions from Dem campaigns, liberal orgs.’ And the SEIU, in turn, has organized rallies and marched in solidarity with communists.”

So maybe it’s not really about “commonsense gun safety”?

That should be obvious when you further consider the only people this would affect are the “law-abiding” kind. This, of course, won’t slow a career criminal getting his guns the “traditional way,” that is, illegally, one bit. It will, however, provide the gun-grabbers with another “loophole” to exploit by demanding the end of private sales.

That this is now being embraced by the International Organization for Standardization dovetails “nicely” with dragging the U.S. into the global citizen disarmament campaign. Speaking as someone with no small amount of real-world ISO experience in my past career, nothing at the time suggested facilitating the subversion of unalienable rights was one of the goals.

We didn’t have the hindsight back then to foresee today’s rush to economic fascist woke “capitalist” rope-selling, but now it’s no surprise that it all boils down to enemies foreign and domestic. This further illustrates the remarkable and visionary foresight of the Founders when they passed the Bill of Rights in general and the Second Amendment in particular on to posterity.

Funny, who ended up being able to anticipate future probabilities…

Here’s Priscilla Sims Brown hawking her rights-swindling scam to the “sophisticated” urban provincials at The New York Times DealBook Conference:


About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.

David Codrea

David Codrea
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Larry

“Software would be able to detect, for example, if someone spent $1,000 at a firearm store, and on the same day, received a $1,000 deposit from someone who is not legally allowed to purchase firearms themselves,”

Or $1,100 or $1,200, because certainly you’re not stupid enough to work for this guy for free, right?

Or maybe as much as $2,000, because who’s to say what your cooperation is worth to a guy who can’t do it himself?

Hell, just match any deposit you get that day, including your social security check, then they just press the alarm button.

Last edited 1 year ago by Larry
Tionico

this concept is solid proof this creature lives in a fantasy world all by herself. So Benton Breakmuch wants a gun. He has cash. He also has priors and is smart enough to know HE cant walk into Sportsman’s Warehouse drop his stash and walk out with a heater. SO he recruits his pal Natomie who is green enough in the gills no not yet have acquired “prohibited person” status. DO ya really think Benton will hand his greenbacks to Natie who will then put it into the bank account he likely does not even have so he can use… Read more »

Finnky

I suspect that the vast majority of guns are purchased using credit cards. It’s simply how most commerce gets done these days. They are just trying to amass a list of gun owners. After all, why would anyone spend any money at a firearm-retailer if they didn’t have a gun?
I’m already on all the lists, so no point in trying to go quiet at this point. If and when I sell my gun, I’ll do it for cash and suggest purchaser stick to cash for future transactions.

GomeznSA

Old – correct – plus the added ‘advantage’ of them (whatever disguise they are wearing) being able to flip a switch and turn off your funds…………………

Montana454Casull

Our attorney general already put these clowns on notice that these policies will not fly in Montana . They will not be doing buisness in Montana if they try to institute these draconian practices here in our state. Good bye to all of them , I will not miss them or thier tracking crap .

Finnky

Unfortunately, the banks don’t really care about Montana because the market isn’t all that big. Together all the states whose AGs signed the letter are a big enough market to worry about. I predict there will be a few newly incorporated banks licensed to do business in the select freedom-loving states. Those banks will be owned by the existing mega-banks – and comply with state laws. As independent, bankrupty-remote corporations — sanctions against the owners (typically) do not apply. If you have a credit card from one of the compliant “local” banks to make online purchases from someone who does… Read more »

Ledesma

Filing false police reports is a tactic liberals and socialists have used to menace and do away with their enemies since the Bolsheviks. Exploiting the fact that in harshly disputed situations, it’s usually the side first reported that’s the side most often believed. And in the Rittenhouse, McMichael’s and McCloskey cases even filmed verification hardly convinced rampaging authorities.

Last edited 1 year ago by Ledesma
USMC0351Grunt

Or cases like the school kids chewing their Pop Tarts into the form of a gun? Don’t leave out the breakfast foods market.

Last edited 1 year ago by USMC0351Grunt
Tionico

what I almost never see is the factual report that it was the dumb perverted TEACHER “saw the gun” the kid had chewed. HE avers he did not chew up a gun, but meant it to be a mountain. Imagine how well HE must trust “authority” after that kerfuffle.

GomeznSA

Led – hmm – perhaps setting the stage for ‘electronic’ swatting? Among a host of other potential abuses.
Being an aficionado of sci-fi I have seen such ‘ideas’ taken to extremes on numerous occasions – like say Minority Report or 1984 which was NOT intended to be an instruction manual.

USMC0351Grunt

Not quite 100% yet… Let’s give it until January 10th and perhaps recalculate?

Bigfootbob

GMTA

Bigfootbob

Not sure why you got downvoted, I’ll zero it out. However you left one “player” out of your list of communist enablers who should be first, Richard Milhous Nixon. He was the one who started this path into China.

Steve

No, most rational thinking persons can see you are OTF.

USMC0351Grunt

I wonder if they are going after soap purchases as well? Seems a swarthy inmate in the U.K. wanted history to repeat itself with a “Dillinger Derringer”… https://www.news24.com/drum/news/prison-inmate-makes-gun-out-of-soap-20170728

2A Gun Guy

Good Point David

UncAl

Another banking exec with a psychic degree in bullshit; Roger Rabbit would describe this as another “goon from Toontown!”

USMC0351Grunt

I wonder if they are going after soap purchases as well? Seems a wanna-be slick inmate in the U.K. wanted history to repeat itself with a “Dillinger Derringer”… https://www.news24.com/drum/news/prison-inmate-makes-gun-out-of-soap-20170728

Last edited 1 year ago by USMC0351Grunt
hippybiker

Reminds me of the novelty song “The Witch Doctor.”
“TingTang. Walla Walla Bing Bang.”

Tionico

you left out the “ohh wah” part.Come ONNN mannnn get REEEEEL

Trussman

How the HELL will they know who is on the gun ban list? FFL dealers don’t even get a list. The list of prohibited persons is in constant state of change 24/7. It’s in such a constant state of change that even the NICS system is out of date from one minute to the next. This is a real “clusterf**k” of an idea waiting to happen.

PMinFl

Remember if you have ,say, a pistol and a shotgun and maybe three boxes of ammunition then you are harboring “AN ARSENAL” in your home.

KenW

I don’t know why you were downvoted but what you posted about “the world they thought they would be getting will not happen” is true, and one of the reasons what THEY are doing doesn’t make any sense. But on the other hand, THEY will be in charge on a the ____hole THEY created.

KK

. . . so if I make a bulk purchase of 1,000 rounds of 5.56, will it be flagged as an “unusually large purchase”? Only terrorists need 1,000 rounds? No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer! Wadda the deer wearin’ Kevlar vests? Once they pass limitations on civilian ammunition round count possession, and they will. The system is in place to record ammunition purchasing, through credit cards, and now the new craze in communist states, BACKGROUND CHECKS THAT RECORD ALL AMMUNITION PURCHASES, CALIBER, ROUND COUNT, IN A STATE POLICE DATABASE. Their obstacle to confiscate has been no registration.… Read more »

Last edited 1 year ago by KK
Tank

Nazi playbook incrementally.
I see a division continuing to widen & when it’s got nowhere left to go there will be clear dividing line. Don’t have a date yet but it’s approaching.

Last edited 1 year ago by Tank
kurzninja

Well her name Sims is pretty appropriate for her, because only an NPC bot could come up with something as stupid as this and think it would fly. The wheels are spinning but there’s no one driving.

paracelsus

wait ’til they put a camera in your bathroom
justification: looking for an unlicenced concealed carry

Wild Bill

The remedy to snitch banks is Old Glory Bank in Ok. Please see OldgloryBank.com

Steve

I’ve been purchasing firearms since the late 70s. I have NEVER used a credit card, a bank card etc to purchase those guns.Why? Because I never wanted a bunch of looney tune bankers in NYC or Atlanta knowing where I shopped. It doesn’t take a genius to see “Bud’s Gun Shop” or “Palmetto State Armory” and a purchase of $750 or more to figure out what that is for…duh!!! And guess what? Not one gun shop, not one sporting goods store ever turned down a stack of Benjamins with a few Ulysses Grants thrown in. Here’s a thought – if… Read more »

Steve

You have a LOT of time on your hands don’t ya? A lot of time and a very vivid imagination. I see you write from Oregonestan – well, here in the Free Mountain Republic of Western North Carolina, I can tell you that none of us Good Ol Boys will tolerate any of that garbage, but that deal with the “robots” is a doozy. The big fight is coming. That much I agree on. But, since PedoJoe was hustled into the WH, how many individual liberties have you lost? Can you still buy and own a firearm? Can you legally… Read more »

Deg4u

I think this could be Rusian, you know the one that was always down voting everyone. Must have gotten band and came with different ID.

Steve

Jeez Oldvet – you are truly a drama queen on this board. Do you even read the entire article or do you just skim the headlines and jump on the comment board like Chicken Little proclaiming the sky is falling? LOL