In January, JPMorgan Chase joined Citigroup and Bank of America in rescinding policies discriminating against lawful businesses in the firearm industry—in this case, reversing their policy against lending to rifle manufacturers.
This policy, along with many similar ones, was a legacy artifact from the Obama administration’s “Operation Choke Point,” which applied political pressure to encourage the “debanking” of the firearms industry. As explained on nraila.org at the time, both the DOJ and FDIC pushed an anti-gun agenda on banks, suggesting regulatory problems might result should they continue to do business with pro-Second Amendment organizations. They introduced “reputational risk” as a subjective factor to consider beyond the normal considerations of capital, liquidity, earnings and so on. NRA-ILA noted that this category specifically included entirely lawful activities such as ammunition and firearm sales.
That effort began to unravel during the first Trump administration, but progress stalled during Joe Biden’s term. In August 2025, however, Trump issued an executive order titled “Guaranteeing Fair Banking For All Americans.” In a letter to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), JPMorgan CEO Ben Walter echoed the executive order, stating, “no one should be denied a bank account or service based on religious or political viewpoint or affiliation” and said the bank “support[s] the Administration’s efforts to end political debanking and prevent any administration from weaponizing the banking system to achieve policy objectives.”
