Politics should have no place in major financial institutions’ decisions to extend essential services to various industries, but in 2025, it still does.
That led the National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), and their pro-gun rights colleagues to fire off an explosive missive this week to Wall Street giants over their “debanking” of Second Amendment-related entities.
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and the Bank Policy Institute were on the receiving end of the joint letter. The signatories demanded an “immediate end” to discriminatory practices against manufacturers, retailers, and owners.
Last month’s executive order should have ended open discrimination against the weapons industry
In August, President Donald Trump (R) signed an executive order titled “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans.”
Its purpose was to end the direct and indirect pressure from Wall Street financial firms on the weapons industry. These global corporations employ tactics such as warning about “reputational risk” to strip financial freedom from disfavored individuals and groups.
The letter pulled no punches.
2A groups charged Wall Street with practices that violated the Second Amendment
“As you know, our industry has faced relentless attacks and discriminatory treatment for decades,” the groups charged. “We have been shut out of mainstream financial institutions, including by your banks and those you represent. The assault on our gun manufacturers, retailers, and aligned organizations has been a brazen and ideologically driven campaign to undermine the constitutionally protected right of all Americans to keep and bear arms.”
The effects of this “debanking” are real and powerful. Just as an individual with shaky credit is at the mercy of lenders who will undoubtedly charge higher interest rates, gun-related businesses are forced to resort to the secondary market for financial services.
This increases costs that are passed on to gun buyers.
Instead of the certainty provided by stable relationships with powerful financial firms, Second Amendment businesses are at the mercy of the whims of business tycoons with no stake in the nation’s rich heritage of gun ownership.
The letter cited specific examples of statements made by institutional leaders proving their bias against this sector.
One business pledged to cut off financial ties to manufacturers of “military style rifles for civilian use.” Another referred to the weapons industry as “doing something wrong” as if to assign moral shortcomings to inanimate objects.
In 2019, Wall Street financial institutions testified at a congressional hearing that they would collectively implement rules and regulations aimed at squeezing out firearms manufacturers and retailers. They mumbled something about “values” and “corporate responsibility” while, at the same time, they took steps to eradicate a fundamental constitutional right.
How clear were these steps? In 2021, a House panel heard testimony from Wall Street hotshots that they do not provide financial services to produce semi-automatic rifles.
Of course, these are only the most popular long guns in the nation, with tens of millions in circulation.
In other words, the letter is hardly based on conjecture by wild-eyed radicals. Instead, it used their financial executives’ own words to show these companies the error of their ways.
The signers demanded “a formal, public commitment that you will no longer attempt to debank or otherwise discriminate against our companies or organizations.”
With last month’s executive order laying out in no uncertain terms that Washington will no longer allow blatant discrimination against manufacturers and retailers of firearms, their demand should be quickly met.
After all, such unfair practices would never be allowed against other constitutionally protected industries. Only the Second Amendment is under siege, and it is high time that Wall Street reverse course and do the right thing.
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