Citigroup lifts banking curbs on gun makers and sellers
BY Herschel Smith
1 day, 21 hours ago
Citigroup on Tuesday ended a seven-year-old policy restricting how it provides banking services to firearm manufacturers, sellers and resellers.
The bank launched the policy in March 2018 after a teenage gunman killed 17 people and injured more than a dozen in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14 that year.
Citi said at the time that it would require clients to “adhere to these best practices: (1) they don’t sell firearms to someone who hasn’t passed a background check, (2) they restrict the sale of firearms for individuals under 21 years of age, and (3) they don’t sell bump stocks or high-capacity magazines.”
The bank’s policy applied only to its business clients, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500-sized companies. It did not restrict how Citi’s personal banking customers used their cards. Citi says it provides banking services to more than 19,000 companies globally.
“As a society, we all know that something needs to change. And as a company, we feel we must do our part,” Citigroup Executive Vice President of Enterprise Services and Public Affairs Ed Skyler said in 2018.
But Skyler says things have changed. “The policy was intended to promote the adoption of best sales practices as prudent risk management and didn’t address the manufacturing of firearms,” he wrote Tuesday in a blog post announcing that Citi “will no longer have a specific policy as it relates to firearms.”
Operation choke point, it was called. And it’s illegal because it interferes with interstate commerce.
When the government creates a banking system and essentially forces everyone to use it for business, and then encourages that system to exclude certain actors, it’s also immoral.
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On June 4, 2025 at 7:43 am, Latigo Morgan said:
Only a fool would start banking with them again, or any other bank that “debanked” them.
On June 4, 2025 at 9:07 am, george 1 said:
What is illegal or legal is what the lords in the black robes decide after they confer with their masters. What is illegal or legal can change day to day depending on the current whims of the lords and their masters.
Note that what is illegal or legal is entirely independent from black letter law, the Constitution or previous legal precedent. Just ask “Justice” Ketanji Jackson. Or “Justice” Amy Coney Barrett.