Representative introduces an amendment to cut off funding for Operation Choke Point

  Barack Obama and the Democrats have been unable to get the gun control legislation they so desperately want passed through the Congress, so they have been quietly working behind the scenes from a different angle–they are slowly using the banks to go after the gun dealers.

  They are using a program called Operation Choke Point to intimidate banks from doing business with gun dealers. The main goal of Operation Choke Point was not to go after gun dealers but this program provides the Federal government with cover to do so under the radar. And slowly, but surely, it is beginning to work.

  Operation Choke Point is run by the Department of Injustice and the FDIC and it is supposed to help protect the American people against fraud. In order to help protect the people the Federal government created a list of high risk businesses and if banks do too much business with this group they receive extra scrutiny from the Federal government. And of course gun dealers were added to the list of high risk businesses.

  This is in its infancy but already it is starting to work as a few gun dealers have already been victims of this program, it is only going to get worse in the years to come if this is not halted.

  Now one Congressman, Blaine Luetkemeyer, is making  a move to do just that; he has successfully attached an amendment to a piece of legislation which will cut off the funding for Operation Choke Point.

A Missouri congressman hopes to give the Department of Justice a taste of its own medicine with an amendment to halt an initiative that he says uses “intimidation tactics” and forces banks to sever relationships with legitimate businesses.

Blaine Luetkemeyer wants to choke off funding for “Operation Choke Point.”

“What it does is goes after an entire industry whether it’s obeying the law or not. And that’s just wrong,” Luetkemeyer said of the initiative in an interview with The Daily Caller.

“They are operating legally, and yet Operation Choke Point is not there to go after the bad actors, which I support them doing,” he said, adding, “the problem I have with Operation Choke Point is it goes one step further.”

Luetkemeyer said that gun sellers, ammunition sellers, coin dealers, tobacco sellers, career repair service providers and many other businesses have been wrongly ensnared because of the initiative’s overreach.

“They’re using intimidation on the banking folks to force them to discontinue financial services to their long term customers in some cases,” he said.

“It’s wrong.”

  In my opinion while this amendment might be well-intentioned it is nothing but a feel-good attempt because there is no way this will ever be passed by the Senate.

  So why did I even bother to write about this? The answer is simple: Operation Choke Point is getting very little coverage in the media and even the bloggers do not seem to be writing about this so I feel any attempt to get the word out there to anybody is an effort which must be taken.