Treasury Department Releases Report on Debanking

For a while, it seemed like every week had at least one story of some gun manufacturer or other member of the firearm industry suddenly found themselves without a bank. Considering what they do and the kind of money involved, that was a huge problem. In fact, it still is.

Now, the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a report on Wednesday that discusses it.

And yeah, we all knew what was happening.

The OCC conducted its supervisory review in accordance with the President’s Executive Order, “Guaranteeing Fair Access to Banking for All Americans,” to determine whether these banks’ policies or practices may have required, encouraged, or otherwise influenced banks to deny or limit access to financial services to Americans because of their political or religious beliefs or lawful business activities. The OCC’s findings show that, between 2020 and September 2025, all nine banks had such policies.

“Today’s report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses,” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould. “Americans should have access to financial services regardless of their beliefs, affiliations, or political views. Fair access to financial services is not a mantra—it is a mandate. The Trump Administration is committed to ending the weaponization of finance against hardworking Americans, once and for all.”

In the report, the OCC found that broad reputation risk policies—which lacked clear standards and objective, risk-based criteria—disadvantaged certain Americans based on their political, religious, or social views or based on their lawful business activities. The OCC also found that banks maintained public and nonpublic policies restricting certain industry sectors’ access to financial services, including those in oil and gas exploration, coal mining or coal-powered plants, firearms or ammunition manufacturing or distribution, construction or operation of detention facilities, the manufacturing, distribution or online retail of tobacco or e-cigarettes, and digital asset activities.

In preparing the report, the OCC reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints to OCC-regulated institutions and received approximately 50,000 documents consisting of approximately 420,000 pages from these banks regarding their policies, procedures, practices, and individual customer decisions.

Now, the question is whether anything will happen.

The truth of the matter is that the whole “reputation risk” crap is just that, crap. It’s nothing more than a way they can divest themselves of inconvenient customers in unpopular but purely legal industries, particularly should fortunes turn and make those industries unpopular. 

The Firearms industry took a massive hit when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others in his administration started making rumblings about pressuring banks to do just this. It got so bad that Intuit reversed a lot of credit card charges made by Gunsite customers. This included many cases where the products were shipped.

That should never have happened. 

Maybe now that there’s a deep look being taken at this practice, we might see something, but the truth of the matter is that it’s ongoing, and it’s ongoing even with the Trump administration supposedly calling the shots, as noted above in the second link.

However, I also won’t hold my breath here. This is a report of something we knew was happening the entire time. The OCC says it’s working to create policies to prevent this sort of behavior, but unless it’s really strict and comprehensive, I give these banks about eight seconds before they figure out how to work around it.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

Help us continue to report on their efforts and legislative successes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.