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Richard Lipsey, the chairman of Lipsey LLC, the largest firearms distributor in the United States, told the OCC that corporate activism and the fallout of Operation Choke Point — the since-abandoned Obama-era effort to cut off members of “high risk” industries, including firearms dealers, from access to the banking system — have made it difficult for firms in his industry to do business.

“Unfortunately, while [Operation Choke Point] is no longer in place under President Trump,” Lipsey wrote, “the financial institutions continue to discriminate against [firearms dealers] and systemically attempt to pick and choose the types of legal products they will tolerate their customers’s manufacturing and selling to law-abiding Americans. “Operation Choke Point has effectively been privatized, away from the purview of elected officials and the voters they represent.”

Congressional Democrats bristled at the pending rule. A group of 23 House Democrats wrote a letter to the OCC indicating that discrimination of the sort described by Brower and Lipsey is a necessary step toward creating a safer society.

“The quantitative-only risk analysis that would be required by the [FAFSR],” the congressmen wrote, “discounts other material risks, including public safety, to the extent financial institutions voluntarily chose to adopt a decision-making framework intended to reduce gun violence when determining who and how they serve potential customers.” The delegation also noted that the proposed rule “would do nothing to ensure communities of color are better served by the banking system.”

The proposal drew the ire of leading officials in the banking industry, who contend that FAFSR poses an unnecessary burden to lenders. Greg Baer of the Bank Policy Institute, a group that represents several of the nation’s leading banks, wrote a letter to the OCC taking issue with the “sweeping practical implications of [FAFSR]” and “the faulty legal reasoning underpinning it.”