(Freedom.news) It is a program that was supposed to go away but apparently the Obama Justice Department, which never passes up a chance to punish gun owners and offend (rather than defend) the Second Amendment, is still running Operation Choke Point, the program that puts the financial squeeze on legitimate businesses that the administration simply doesn’t like.
As reported by the Daily Signal, the stories of a pair of businessmen recently denied banking services because they sell guns is suggestive that the secretive program is still affecting targeted industries around the country.
In the case of one large bank in New England, that institution denied a line of credit to a former police officer who opened a gun and tactical business in Monroe, Conn., said it “no longer lends to firearms dealers.”
In a second case, a branch of a bank in North Carolina refused to set up a payment service for a firearms seller in Tyron, N.C., because he was selling guns, the shop owner said.
Imagine, if you can, if these banks had said they would no longer lend to, say, gay couples or couples of color – think there’d be much outrage from our hypocritical administration and co-opted mainstream media?
In interviews with both businessmen, the Daily Signal reports, each of them says they were targeted specifically because of the type of business they operate – essentially, they are being discriminated against for selling a lawful, constitutionally-guaranteed product.
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What’s that? No feigned outrage from the Oval Office? No scathing editorials from The New York Times and the Washington Post about how unfair and unconstitutional such discrimination is? Of course not; both of these papers hate the Second Amendment, even though it helps protect the First Amendment they so often hide behind in order to trash other traditional American values.
The Daily Signal notes that some experts believe these banks’ decisions are stem from Operation Choke Point, which is a Justice Department program that, per government officials [PDF], aims to “attack Internet, telemarketing, mail, and other mass market fraud against consumers, by choking fraudsters’ access to the banking system.”
How the sale of a legal product constitutes “fraud” is anyone’s guess, but again, the more likely answer is that the Obama regime has been openly hostile to gun rights and really, the program is taking aim at industries the president hates, which also includes payday lenders, by the way.
“It is increasingly clear that the effects from Operation Choke Point are continuing to be felt, even if the administration has told Congress it has backed off from this campaign,” Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, one of the nation’s leading lobbying firms for the gun industry, told The Daily Signal.
Now, what is Congress prepared to do about it? Granted, Obama is on his way out the door and likely will be followed by the political hacks he appointed to the Justice Department, including the current attorney general, Loretta Lynch. But career political hacks will remain in their posts, and that likely will mean OCP will continue, at some level, until the next attorney general and president specifically put an end to it.
Which means the Senate, especially, with its advice and consent role, has a role to play in who the next attorney general will be. Have enough senators had enough of Obama’s overtly political approach to governing? We’ll see.
In the meantime, it sure seems like a couple of gun store owners have a legal case of discrimination on their hands. Until January 2017 at least, that will be their only recourse.
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