trump un arms trade treaty
(AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Operation Choke Point was an initiative started during the Obama administration ostensibly to stop fraud. That may have been the plan, but in practice the initiative was very successful in stopping lawful businesses such as gun stores and others the progressive movement found objectionable from getting commercial loans or opening bank accounts. News comes today that the Trump administration has finally released Obama’s chokehold on these funding streams, ending the program once and for all.

Bank loans are the life blood of American business. Without loans, such as working capital lines of credit, businesses would be unable to purchase the equipment and stock they need to expand and grow. Distributors have tried to fill the gap where they can, making payment terms more favorable for gun stores and giving them more time to pay, but financing operating costs and getting construction loans can still be difficult to obtain for these objectionable businesses.

Thankfully that should all change now.

From the Washington Examiner:

The Trump administration has ended Operation Choke Point, the anti-fraud initiative started under the Obama administration that many Republicans argued was used to target gun retailers and other businesses that Democrats found objectionable.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told GOP representatives in a Wednesday letter that the long-running program had ended, bringing a conclusion to a chapter in the Obama years that long provoked and angered conservatives who saw Choke Point as an extra-legal crackdown on politically disfavored groups.

“All of the department’s bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Chokepoint are now over, the initiative is no longer in effect, and it will not be undertaken again,” Boyd wrote in the letter.

This news comes after months of lawsuits and congressional lobbying by Republicans to roll back the Obama era scheme, one of many designed to use the government’s bureaucracy to enact regulations that the executive branch couldn’t get through congress.

Many others still remain, such as the mandatory reporting of multiple weapons sales in border states, and racial questions on ATF firearm purchase forms. Are these on the chopping block, too? Watch this space.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

37 COMMENTS

    • This. This. This.
      The ATF could make that F’n background check almost instant… if they wanted to. No where in the law does it say that you must wait, 8 ,9 10 months for a suppressor. If (until) they make them over the counter, why not “fix” the process and make it take a week.

      • YES. YES. YES.

        I’d *almost* not object to the NFA registry and the $200 tax if I could have my can in less than a week.

        Sometimes we try to eat the burger all at once, because that’s what’s right, justified, and constitutional. There is much wisdom in smaller bites and making actual progress

        • Yup… you can slow cook that frog. We dont have to demand the ocean and be mad at a pond.

          I believe in our rights, but I also believe that forward progress (whether its a yard, 3 yards or 7 yards) is better than no progress.

          Maybe the “answer” to this suppressor thing is not to run down the hill at the cows, and instead walk down. Get the background check damn near instant. Make more and more available and on the street because of it. Normalize it. And then its easier to move them off the list.

        • You know you can’t slow cook a live frog unless you lobotomize it first? At least according to some stuff I read on the internet.

          I still like the metaphor.

  5. I’d prefer Trump be more aggressive over gun rights. I think everyone would. Still, his Secretary of the Interior choice and his SC appointee are worth having Trump over Hillary even if he did nothing else. On top of that though, he signs pro gun bills and passes pro gun EOs. It’s babystep legislation and EOs and it isn’t everything I was hoping for. But as Illinois Shooter in Texas points out, even if you demand the ocean, you don’t have to be mad when you get a pond. (not a direct quote, just my interpretation).

    That’s still an awful lot of pro gun for the half year or so he’s been in office.

  6. Yay, BUT . . . ok, so we beat and clawed our way back to zero in 3 years?

    F ending Choke Point, I want reparations. Push back should be 300% I want treble-damages, and I want a shit-ton of government aholes to lose their jobs, their security clearances, and their ability to even call D.C.

    I want gov office audits, and censure.

    Like the MI fiasco with Rock River and Springfield, I want to know if any POS skirted the issue by ho-ing themselves out.

    I want a 300 year moratorium on any (D) holding any office or position with regard to 2A anything.

  7. Totally off topic but the ads are cracking me up today.

    Apparently no one said anything when celebs died from a diabetes breakthrough that left doctors speechless and is also a “hack” for shooting out to 100 yards while curing foot fungus. Try it tonight!

  8. image what the Trump admin could accomplish if they quit all the warmongering rhetoric…. and stop using twitter…

    • You mean the part where Trump made North Korea’s man child shut the fuck up? I’m all for that kind of war mongering.

    • Yeah because it’s Trump that is holding up new legislation, and not an impotent and cuck ridden GOP. It’s the tweets. Sure buddy.

  9. Operation Choke Point illustrates what happens when an entire business segment refuses to do business with you.

    I enthusiastically support freedom of association for business under the stipulation that your business cannot refuse to do business with someone based on their political position.

    A lot of people will scoff at my stipulation as being totally unnecessary in a free market. Note that a market which chooses winners and losers based on politics is NOT a free market.

  10. You guys have to learn to choose your wording better.

    What “crackdown”???? Gunstores are legal businesses. This was using the power of oversize government to punish lawful commerce with which the demoncraps do not agree.

    “Crackdown” suggests they were doing something wrong, when the party in the wrong is, well, you know.

    How about “oppression”? “Suppression”? “Improper interference with”? Or something.

    • Crackdown is often used as a synonym for oppression or suppression, but you are right that it isn’t the best fit as it does have a connotation of “suggest[ing] they were doing something wrong.”

    • We need something done about whats happening on the west coast to slow that down from spreading across the country. Like a ban on large capacity mags, a 30 round mag is a standard mag, not a large capacity.
      Not to mention all the evil feature laws in California. If we don’t hit this hard, it will spread.

  11. I just wonder if this decision actually has anything to do with Trump, or are career DOJ people just tired of wasting their time on a at best questionable program that was under siege?

    Either way, this wouldn’t have happened if Hillary was president.

  14. ““All of the department’s bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Chokepoint are now over, the initiative is no longer in effect, and it will not be undertaken again,” Boyd wrote in the letter.”

    Nice start, but more needs to be done.

    When gun legislation hits Trump’s desk, we need in there insurance the next Democrat POTUS doesn’t try that trick again.

    The name and email field problem is still there, TTAG…

    • I.just post less…yay Trump. Imagine what he’d do if didn’t say SO MUCH stupid shite😄

  17. Choke Point was an illegal operation along with all the other crimes committed (Fast & Furious?) etc.. But alas it’s over at least.

  18. Donald Trump has always worked behind the scenes to get what he wants. And he is great at defending himself. He fights back and it drives the left crazy.
    Republicans aren’t suppose to fight back.

  19. Just like I told you before the election Trump will come through for us, remember with the obstructing Dems and gutless RINOs in the GOP it will take time but he will help us Make America Great Again.

  20. Now all i want is that he gets another pro 2a judge in the supreme court and that they rule that a arm, as in keep and bear arms, is any such device that makes pew pew, and bear means i can carry it everywhere in public except for privately owned land where the owner says i can’t.

  22. Bah-ba-da-baaah! Finally we have broad-ranging action by the Trump administration in favor of gun owners (albeit indirectly via gun businesses). Props to the old man, I’ve been logically skeptical, but this demonstrates an actual commitment to helping us as he can; first time in his whole life that I’m aware of.

    I see from the comments here that many think it isn’t enough –it isn’t– but I do recognize that this area of regulatory policy is 1) truly an area where he commands authority & doesn’t need congress to accomplish goals, and 2) an absolute rat’s nest of bureaucracy and accountability laws that prevent true fiat-orders from being implemented overnight (because money is involved) so there are a number of proposals/studies/etc that must be followed to undo Obama’s changes. Obama didn’t implement Choke Point overnight, either, he did so quietly until it was too late to complain.

    What is heartening is that this likely did take Trump & his team some time to put together. Unlike broadening the Sporting Purposes clause –which he absolutely could do with a single tweet if he cared to effect truly significant change– this required the aforementioned studies, paperwork, and man hours to put into motion, which actually does demonstrate some degree of dedication, even if it is at a subdued/background volume level we don’t associate with Trump. I really hope his guys are getting practiced at undoing these kinds of overreaches, and are working shifts to push back in many other areas in the near future. Import bans and FFL/ITAR stuff would be similar areas Trump could roll back previous administrations’ restrictions for all our benefit.

  23. Very sloow process 2017 …………..

    Wheres national ccw, remove suppressors, sbr/sbs and aow”s from nfa list and federal “no gun zones” ?? give us the bigger bombs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comments are closed.