12-25-2018, 01:13 PM
It turns out that the simplest way to buy anything -- a credit card -- is the tool of choice for buying firearms and ammo in quantities suitable for mass shootings.
![[Image: receipts.png]](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2018/12/17/sorkinguns/04b96de3f5eb8dd88a8adc49fa9513d5bf12ce73/receipts.png)
These are credit card receipts involving Omar Mateen, who opened fire upon the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 49 dead, 53 wounded. That's a little more than $37 per killing, or $18 per killing or injury.
On another killer:
The banks might want to stop the financing of massacres; I'd want to if I were a banker because those who commit mass killings are more likely to default than pay what they charged for the tools of the grisly deed. That is money alone.
26 states prohibit people from buying lottery tickets with credit cards out of a concern that people who charge their tickets will lose money while becoming compulsive gamblers.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018...cards.html
These are credit card receipts involving Omar Mateen, who opened fire upon the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 49 dead, 53 wounded. That's a little more than $37 per killing, or $18 per killing or injury.
Quote: Two days before Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, he went on Google and typed “Credit card unusual spending.”
Mr. Mateen had opened six new credit card accounts — including a Mastercard, an American Express card and three Visa cards — over the previous eight months. Twelve days before the shooting, he began a $26,532 buying spree: a Sig Sauer MCX .223-caliber rifle, a Glock 17 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, several large magazines, thousands of rounds of ammunition and a $7,500 ring for his wife that he bought on a jewelry store card. His average spending before that, on his only card, was $1,500 a month.
His web browsing history chronicled his anxiety: “Credit card reports all three bureaus,” “FBI,” and “Why banks stop your purchases.”
He needn’t have worried. None of the banks, credit-card network operators or payment processors alerted law enforcement officials about the purchases he thought were so suspicious.
On another killer:
Quote:A little more than a month before James E. Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 others at a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012, a psychiatrist was considering having him involuntarily committed. Mr. Holmes quit his job, filed for unemployment benefits and used a new Mastercard issued by USAA to help buy more than $11,000 in weapons and military gear. He bought two tear-gas grenades, a gas mask and filter, a .40-caliber Glock handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, a .223-caliber AR-15, a 100-round drum magazine, two 40-round magazines, a laser sight, a bulletproof vest, 5,000 rounds of ammunition, two sets of handcuffs and “road stars” meant to slice through car tires.
“This was a civilian making these orders, not the police and not the military,” said Sandy Phillips, whose daughter, Jessica, died in the attack. “Someone should have noticed.”
The banks might want to stop the financing of massacres; I'd want to if I were a banker because those who commit mass killings are more likely to default than pay what they charged for the tools of the grisly deed. That is money alone.
26 states prohibit people from buying lottery tickets with credit cards out of a concern that people who charge their tickets will lose money while becoming compulsive gamblers.
Quote:John Shrewsberry, chief financial officer of Wells Fargo — which counts the National Rifle Association as a client — has dismissed the notion that banks should regulate the use of its credit cards for gun purchases.
“The best way to make progress on these issues is through the political and legislative process,” he said in April on a conference call with investors.
There may be good reason that no bank executive wants to talk out loud about guns: In October, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, introduced a bill, the No Red and Blue Banks Act, which would “prohibit the federal government from giving contracts to banks that discriminate against lawful businesses based solely on social policy considerations.”
The bill was directed at banks that changed their policies regarding guns.
“Our friends at Citigroup and Bank of America apparently aren’t busy enough with their banking business; they have decided that they are going to set policy for the Second Amendment,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on Twitter.
And a policy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union recently expressed concern about how efforts to prevent mass shootings could infringe on individual rights.
“The implication of expecting the government to detect and prevent every mass shooting is believing the government should play an enormously intrusive role in American life,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the A.C.L.U. Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, wrote in July.
Not all the concerns involve privacy or politics. Some are practical.
George Brauchler, the district attorney who oversaw the investigation of Mr. Holmes after the Aurora shooting, said the deluge of data the police receive already presents challenge.
“To some extent we are looking for a needle in a haystack and that haystack keeps getting bigger and bigger,” he said.
The data could inform old-fashioned police work that might or might not lead to something more, he said.
“Do I wish someone from law enforcement had been able to go to his door and knock on his door and figure out a way to talk their way into it or to freak him out?" he said of Mr. Holmes. “Yeah, absolutely.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018...cards.html
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.