Next Front In Fight For Second Amendment Rights Could Be Corporate Boardrooms

Future battles for the Second Amendment may be decided in the offices of bank CEOs as opposed to in Congress or courtrooms.

During a speech to the Second Amendment Foundation’s Gun Rights Policy Conference on Sept. 27, Public Square (a company providing payment processing and financial services to companies that are discriminated against by traditional banks and financial technology firms) general counsel Jim Giudice warned that the fight for gun rights would be more about securing access to financial services as opposed to trying to strike down bans on firearms like Glock pistols and AR-15 rifles. In interviews conducted by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the extent of the issues firearms industry-related companies experienced with debanking became apparent.

“I want people to understand the reason why going through the regulatory state and using these other levers of political and cultural pressure is going to be the vector of choice is because we have been so successful in the courts,” Giudice told the DCNF, noting that a “monumental” legal victory was looming when the Supreme Court decides Viramontes v. Cook County, a Second Amendment challenge to a ban on modern semiautomatic firearms.

“What I think is important but also difficult, when folks read about or learn about Operation Chokepoint-type behavior, they can certainly see on its face, okay, this certainly seems like an abuse of government power and authority,” Giudice added. “But for people that don’t live and breathe every day inside of the financial services industry, it can be difficult to really understand. Well, what does this actually mean in practice and then therefore, what do we actually do to combat it?”

Operation Chokepoint and the later “debanking” of firearms manufacturers, distributors and federal firearms licensees (FFLs), was a campaign to cut lawful gun businesses off from ordinary banking, credit and payment processing after agencies and then banks used “high risk” and “reputational risk” labels instead of changing laws like the Gun Control Act. The regulatory effort took place after Republicans defeated gun-control legislation in Congress in the aftermath of the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

While the first Trump administration halted the operation, some financial institutions continued to pressure companies in the firearms industries to adopt certain practices or face the closure of their accounts for years afterwards.

“We continue to advocate for passage of legislation to make Trump policies permanent law, like Fair Access to Banking bill, for example,” National Shooting Sports Foundation Senior Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence Keane told the DCNF, adding, “If the next administration is not favorable towards the industry, I think we fear that we will see backsliding by the big banks, you know, the way things were during, you know, the Biden administration or even earlier to the first Trump administration.”

Republican Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr introduced HR 987, the Fair Access to Banking Act, in the House of Representatives on Feb. 5, 2025. Republican North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer introduced companion legislation, S 401, on Feb. 4, 2025. Neither version of the legislation, which prohibits the use of “reputational risk” by financial institutions when making credit decisions, has advanced past the committees they were assigned to.

Keane noted that NSSF had become aware of a company manufacturing firearms sights that was de-banked. The DCNF asked the NSSF for additional details about the case and to contact the company, but was informed the company elected not to go public.