Committee advances bill aimed at restricting merchant codes for firearm sales, adds enforcement provisions

Representative Jamie Lean presented House Bill 234 to the Judiciary Committee as an update to the 2nd Amendment Financial Privacy Act passed in 2023. The sponsor said the amendments add definitions, civil and criminal penalties, and change several provisions to require the Attorney General to investigate and enforce violations.

"We're going to create 914405...this is where the criminal actions come in and then the definitions used to go with it," Lean said, summarizing the bills structure and explaining that the changes would clarify definitions such as "firearm," "firearm accessory," "merchant," and "payment card."

Key provisions in the draft presented to the committee included:

- A prohibition on using state funds to "enforce, administer, or cooperate with" any federal or other program that "willfully keeps or causes to keep any list, record or registry of privately owned firearms" created through merchant codes or other payment-card classifications. The draft explicitly exempted records federal law requires of licensed federal firearms dealers, citing 18 U.S.C. 922.

- Definitions for merchant-category distinctions and language forbidding merchants from…