The Ohio Senate has passed Senate Bill 148, sponsored by State Sen. Terry Johnson, R-McDermott, to protect Ohio’s firearm owners and retailers from financial discrimination and to preserve all of our Second Amendment rights.

Senate Bill 148:

• Bans a financial institution from assigning a firearms code for retail purchases in a way that distinguishes between a firearms retailer and other retailers.

• Prohibits financial institutions from declining a payment card transaction involving a firearms dealer merely because the transaction is assigned a firearms code.

• Prohibits any governmental entity from keeping a list or registry of firearms or firearm owners.

• Empowers the Ohio Attorney General to investigate alleged violations of these prohibitions and to bring civil action against violators.

“Our Second Amendment is under attack again by a leftist international organization that wants to stomp on your Constitutional right to purchase firearms,” Johnson said. “Enough is enough. Senate Bill 148 preserves your fundamental Second Amendment rights and prevents your privacy from being invaded by big government and private corporations.”

Senate Bill 148 was introduced to address the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for identifying purchases at firearm retailers. This new code permits credit card companies to track lawful firearm purchases, violating the privacy of customers and businesses and threatening the Second Amendment rights of Americans. It could be used to identify “suspicious purchases” of firearms and ammunition, block those purchases, and notify law enforcement and the FBI of these purchases. Politicians and credit card companies are facing pressure to adopt this new merchant code, as just happened in California as part of that state’s continuing march to trample the Second Amendment rights of its law-abiding citizens.

Senate Bill 148 now moves to the Ohio House of Representatives for consideration.