Since taking office for the second time, President Donald Trump and his administration have worked to end political debanking and guarantee that all law-abiding Americans and businesses have access to financial services. To this end, on October 14 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published a report titled “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans.” The item details how firearms businesses faced discrimination from financial services providers for dealing in lawful and constitutionally protected goods.
The report is the result of President Trump’s August 2025 Executive Order 14331, which established that “no American should be denied access to financial services because of their constitutionally or statutorily protected beliefs, affiliations, or political views,” and ensured that politicized or unlawful debanking is not used “to inhibit such beliefs, affiliations, or political views.” This was followed in April by a final rule from the OCC and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) titled “Prohibition on the Use of Reputation Risk by Regulators,” which eliminated “reputation risk” as a means of injecting politics into banking regulation by prohibiting examiners from using this subjective assessment to pressure or penalize banks.
President Trump’s efforts to remove politics from banking are of particular salience to gun owners and the firearms industry. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in coordination with regulators such as the FDIC, began pressuring banks to cut ties and services to industries they considered to be “high risk,” which under the anti-gun Obama-Biden administration unsurprisingly included firearm and ammunition-related business.
The program, billed Operation Choke Point (OCP), encouraged broad financial “de-risking” and led to banks freezing or terminating services to lawful businesses based on “reputation risk,” instead of any proven misconduct or illegality. Guidance documents provided to banks at the time specifically listed firearm and ammunition sales as high-risk activity, although they are some of the most highly regulated industries in the country.
The new report documents the financial discrimination that the firearms industry was subject to under previous administrations. Further, it illuminates an avenue by which gun control advocates seek to undermine Second Amendment rights even when their preferred policies are rejected at the ballot box.
For instance, the report highlights a circumstance where a firearms business was refused financial services when that business did not privately enact policy measures that gun control advocates have long pursued. The item explains,
a bank customer involved in the firearms industry requested assistance with an initial public offering. The bank’s environmental and social risk management policy at the time restricted it from new business relationships with customers that did not have policies aligned with the bank’s internal responsible firearms standards, including limitations on the sale of high-capacity magazines and restrictions on firearms sales to individuals under the age of 21. Although the customer believed its firearm policy complied with applicable law, the bank denied the business the requested service because the customer’s policies governing firearms sales were not consistent with the bank’s policy.
The report spotlights the firearms industry as a particular target for this type of discrimination. The report notes that, “[s]everal banks restricted financing to firearms manufacturers or retailers, including those offering assault- or military-style weapons for civilian use.” At least one bank “conditioned relationships with these manufacturers and retailers on their adherence to the bank’s view of ‘best practices’ regarding the sale of firearms.”
Showing how anti-gun government pressure influenced bank decision-making, the report cites one bank’s “reputation risk review of a prospective client in the firearms industry,” which noted that “[u]nder the Biden administration, banks could face greater supervisory pressure to move away from lending to the firearms industry.” The OCC report goes on to explain that the same bank “similarly flagged the potential for scrutiny under the Biden administration for lending to the firearms industry in its 2024 review of another prospective customer.”
Gun owners should commend the Trump administration for bringing this important information about financial discrimination against the firearms industry to light, along with the administration’s determined efforts to end this pernicious practice for good. Readers are encouraged to examine the full OCC report here.
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