The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a finalized rule Thursday to end discrimination by financial service providers against the firearms industry and more.
The rule will “ensure fair access to banking services provided by large national banks, federal savings associations, and federal branches and agencies of foreign bank organizations.” In essence, the rule guarantees that fair access to banking is given to all industries based on financial merit, rather than for political reasons.
It effectively protects those in the financial-services industry from pressures levied upon them by special interests groups who stand against the Second Amendment.
“The rule, in other words, would refocus banks on doing their jobs of helping to promote lawful economic activity and managing financial risk while leaving policy decisions about what sorts of businesses are permissible in the first place to the political branches and the U.S. Constitution,” reported NRA-ILA.
Discrimination against the firearms industry, and other “sin industries,” began under the Obama administration. They sought to circumvent the democratic processes by pressuring banks to sever ties with the firearms industry.
As previously reported by America’s 1st Freedom, “Once, financial-services companies were neutral players in policy debates. Policy controlled them, but they were not creating social policies. That is no longer the case. Now some banks and other companies in the financial-services sector are pushing gun-control policies.”
This new rule from the OCC will rectify such mistreatment and malpractice in the purportedly neutral financial-services sector, ensuring that Americans will be able to continue to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
“As Comptrollers and staff in previous administrations have made clear in speeches, guidance, and testimony, banks should not terminate services to entire categories of customers without conducting individual risk assessments. It is inconsistent with basic principles of prudent risk management to make decisions based solely on conclusory or categorical assertions of risk without actual analysis. Moreover, elected officials should determine what is legal and illegal in our country,” said Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian P. Brooks.
These new rules still allow banks to to freely make business decisions. This rule change simply “requires covered banks to make those products and services they choose to offer available to all customers in the communities they serve, based on consideration of quantitative, impartial, risk-based standards established by the bank,” says the press release.
