In a notable move to protect gun owners’ privacy, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed into law the Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act on May 6. This move was met with high praise from pro-gun rights groups, especially the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which issued a press release lauding the passage of the law.

The legislation is a response to efforts to have credit card companies and other financial institutions track gun-related purchases ostensibly to help law enforcement prevent crimes using firearms. It is aimed at shielding the financial privacy of Alabama residents and preventing the private sector from creating a de facto gun registry.

The newly signed law prohibits financial institutions from assigning a specific Merchant Category Code (MCC) to firearm-related purchases. This move will not only protect the privacy of gun owners, but it will also prevent discrimination against firearm retailers. It also bars the creation or maintenance of any database or registry that tracks private firearm ownership in the state.

Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF’s Senior Vice President & General Counsel, highlighted the law’s purpose, characterizing it as “a necessary tool to protect the Second Amendment and privacy rights of the citizens of Alabama from unlawful intrusion on their private purchases when purchasing firearms and ammunition with a payment card.”

This move comes amid broader national concerns over privacy and the inevitability of institutions misusing such financial tracking to go after lawful gun owners. It is a way to push back against those who have pressured these companies to play a stronger role in targeting those purchasing firearms or gun-related products.

Entities such as Amalgamated Bank and major credit card companies recently announced they would adhere to a California law requiring them to track gun-related purchases.

American Express, Visa, and Mastercard have announced they will comply with a California law that requires the companies to begin using a merchant code specific to firearms and ammunition retailers.

Major credit card companies are moving to make a merchant code available for firearm and ammunition retailers in order to comply with a new California law that will allow banks to potentially track suspicious gun purchases and report them to law enforcement, CBS News has learned.

Retailers are assigned merchant codes based on the types of goods they sell, and the codes allow banks and credit card companies to detect purchase patterns. Currently gun shops are lumped in with other types of retailers, such as sporting goods stores.

Mastercard, Visa and American Express initially agreed to implement a standalone code for firearm sellers, but later paused their work on it after receiving blowback from Second Amendment advocates concerned tracking gun purchases would infringe on the rights of legal gun owners.

The NSSF also referred to an op-ed penned by New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin in which he first advocated for such a tracking system in 2018. In the piece, he essentially acknowledged that such a move would create a searchable database of American gun owners using the private sector since the government is forbidden from doing so.

With the passage of this law, Alabama joins Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee, which have enacted similar policies. Other states will likely follow suit as the anti-gunner lobby in America seeks to find new ways to make it harder for people to keep and bear arms.