Stopping the sale of semiautomatic assault rifles without passing a law

Recently, I testified alongside Matt Kuroghlian, senior class presidentat Trumbull High school, at a public hearing for proposed bills to ban bump stocks and ghost guns.

Predictably, my proposed amendments did not sit well with NRA-controlled Republican lawmakers of the Judiciary Committee. In fact, stateRep. Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin, went as far as calling me a fascist for my plan to follow the money and put a stop to the sale of semiautomatic assault rifles — the tool of choice for mass shooters.

My amendments call on the constitutional officers of Connecticut and the leadership of the State Legislature to spearhead a collaborative movement with like-minded states to leverage their shared financial power to impact change.

This is the kind of change that helped end apartheid in South Africa. Through publicly traded corporations, we are already seeing the beginning of this kind of action last week by Citigroup, which is restricting firearm sales by its business customers.

At the hearing, I asked the Judiciary Committee to consider adding a provision to demand all major credit card companies — Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, and major financial institutions that process credit card transactions, to stop all processing of financial transactions for semiautomatic assault rifles.

It can be done. This requires no legislative action, no laws to be passed. Just the will of the CEO’s and Boards of these publicly traded companies to amend their terms of service. This action would forbid the use of their credit cards to purchase semiautomatic assault rifles, just like they forbid the use now to purchase Bitcoin or cannabis.

A change of the terms of service as I describe would immediately take away any incentive for a merchant to sell semiautomatic assault rifles. A merchant would not be able to accept a credit card for any transactions in the store since the system cannot distinguish the difference between the sale of a pair of sneakers or a basketball from an AR-15 rifle.

According to a recent MSN Poll, 70 percent of Americans are calling for these kinds of tougher gun regulations. Right now.

Until we have laws at the Federal level, a national solution won’t be possible. Guns and shooters move across state lines and a piecemeal state-by-state regulatory system leaves us all vulnerable to the rules in the most lax state.

What I am proposing will bring about shareholder resolutions that will terrify big corporations. It will force them to respond with marketplace driven regulatory solutions that will break through the government paralysis and the divisiveness between parties, listen to the will of the people, and make Connecticut, and our nation, safer for us all.

Working together with businesses, community leaders and youth activists, we can achieve the change that huge majorities of Americans want. This is how we must move Connecticut forward — with third way solutions that solve intractable problems.

Just think, those credit cards in your wallet are a major solution to the scourge of semiautomatic assault weapons in American society.