Gun rights advocates are thanking President Trump as he prepares to leave office this week. In one of the last moves of his administration, Trump is rebuking an Obama-era rule, which tried to pressure big banks to cut ties with the firearm industry.
The Trump administration issued a new rule Thursday, rebuking the Obama-era Operation Choke Point. The new rule is called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (or OCC). It goes against Operation Choke Point, in which the Department of Justice investigated big banks who did business with the gun and payday lending industries. Gun rights advocates applaud Trump's latest move with the OCC rule, which comes at the same time more Americans are buying firearms.
“I don’t think it’s easy to be able to put today’s gun owner into a simple category of saying ‘Well, it’s just something old, white Republican men do.’ I think it’s something now that more and more Americans are taking responsible for their own safety and exercising their second amendment rights,” Mark Oliva, spokesman for the NSSF, the firearm industry’s trade association, told KTRH.
However, Oliva expects the Biden administration to try and do away with Trump's pro-gun policies, and to put more restrictions on buying and owning a firearm.