The Left has been building the infrastructure to establish a China-style social credit system. It has already been deployed in Canada against the Trucker’s Protest last winter, and the UK is looking to censor the Internet using China as a model. The IRS tracking all your transactions of $600 or more.

Here in the US Leftists have been pressuring private companies to become proxies for state power, threatening companies unless they do the Left’s bidding.

And the corporations have become willing accomplices. Facebook and Twitter censor, web services deplatform, and GoFundMe limits charitable giving to the wrong causes. And just recently the credit card companies announced that they would attach special codes to gun purchases, making it easier to track your constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

The credit card companies aren’t refusing to allow the use of their services to purchase firearms. What they are doing is tracking purchasers and making it easier to track you down. This move also opens up the door to “accidental” data releases that always seem to effect conservative behavior and individuals but not leftists. Nothing to see here, move along.

This is all part of the same scheme to create a de facto social credit system. Keeping the plebs in their place by making it easy to track, silence, and punish us for not readily submitting to their will. They have a plan and they are implementing it. COVID provided a great excuse for the expansion of state and corporate power and they seized it, but there is much much more to come.

We don’t have to take this all lying down, and in the case of tracking gun purchases 23 Republican Attorneys General are helping fight back. The Wall Street Journal got an exclusive preview of a letter being sent by the AGs to the credit card companies pushing back against the proposal:

The attorneys general said in a letter that the card companies’ plan could lead to the misuse of consumer data and wouldn’t protect the public.

“Categorizing the constitutionally protected right to purchase firearms unfairly singles out law-abiding merchants and consumers alike,” their letter to the three companies says. The letter, a draft of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, is expected to be sent Tuesday.

The effort was led by the offices of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

Visa, Mastercard and Amex use merchant-category codes, or MCCs, to identify types of merchants by the goods and services they sell. The companies said earlier this month that they would add a new code for firearms retailers, who have long been categorized under broader groups such as specialty retailers or durable-goods sellers. The new code was recently approved by an international entity that sets standards for the payments industry.

The Left is masterful at using the power of the state to bully people into compliance. And they benefit from having the air cover provided by the commentariat and the MSM to make it seem public-spirited. At times it seems that we are all Davids fighting the mighty Goliath of a unified governing elite.

Republicans used to get caught flat-footed and get rolled every time the Left rolled out a new way to circumscribe our freedom. Trump started the movement to fight back hard, and we are now seeing signs of life among Republican office holders. Some, like Ron DeSantis, follow the Trump playbook better than the coach himself could.

Taking a page out of that playbook, the AGs are threatening to use their power against the credit card companies who are enabling future violations of our rights.

In interviews, both Mr. Knudsen and Mr. Skrmetti said they could launch investigations into the companies if they moved forward with the gun-shop code.

“We will marshal the full scope of our lawful authority to protect our citizens and consumers from unlawful attempts to undermine their constitutional rights,” their letter said.

The proposal to track gun purchases through credit cards didn’t come from out of the blue. It was the result of pressure applied by Leftist politicians who, by the way, have the power to regulate corporations into compliance.

The attorneys general of New York and California, both Democrats, have said the card companies should begin tracking gun sales and flagging suspicious purchases to law enforcement. At the news conference last week, New York Attorney General Letitia Jamesreferenced mass shooters using cards to buy guns.

Leftists see their role as forcing the rest of us into complying with their vision of the good, which among other things means ceding absolute power to those very same Leftists. In their utopia you exist only to serve them.

One of our primary roles as conservatives is to stop these power grabs before they succeed. As we saw with the COVID emergency, giving them even an inch of ground often leads to their taking the battlefield.

So Kudos to these Republican Attorneys General. Keep up the fight!