Gun lobbyists drop decades work up a database of gun owner in the United States . During the 2016 election , it turn the information over to the now - disgraced political consulting groupCambridge Analyticato help make the U.S. presidential election swing their direction . It worked and now thousands of gunman owners are finding out their public figure are in databases they never consented to come in .
ProPublica has been reporting on the story about the way gun lobbies , gunman memory board , and gun manufacturersabuse customer privacyanddatafor twelvemonth now . Itslatest investigationconnects the Department of Transportation between purchase made decades ago , lobbying house , and political consultants .
For decade the gun lobbying group the National Shooting Sports Foundation ( NSSF ) knead with manufacturing business and fund to figure out who was buying guns in the U.S. The database was built using warranty cards , data from hunt licenses , and data pulled from entropy gained at the item of sales event .
An attendee looks at Smith & Wesson M&P15 MOE Mid rifles at the Smith & Wesson booth at the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s 34th annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show at the Sands Expo and Convention Center 25 April 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada.© Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
In 2016 , when the gun industry was facing what it feel was an existential scourge , it pulled together its database of client and contracted Cambridge Analytica to avail them cypher out how to get them to vote for Donald Trump . The analytics house cross - cite the customer database from the NSSF with other selective information it had gathered on U.S. voter . It sorted those people into categories and began to micro - target them with advertising online .
If you grease one’s palms a gun , a gun accoutrement , or ammo in the U.S. from the eighties until now , there ’s a good chance one of these databases has a profile about you . According to coverage from ProPublica , it know a potential voter ’s income , their debts , faith , personal interests , and online leverage history .
ProPublica got hold of a luck of the database and get hold of 6,000 people on it to find out how they felt up about being screen out and cataloged by the mass they ’d buy weapons from . Many were shocked to chance out they were on a leaning and felt their privateness had been violate . One of the interesting detail of the story is how piddling data it took to end up in a database .
“ Joseph LeForge , a self - described ‘ privacy orchis , ’ struggled to interpret how it could ’ve encounter . The 74 - yr - old contractile organ has no Facebook account or email address and spoke to ProPublica on a flip telephone set . He wonder if he tripped a conducting wire when he bought shotgun shells over a decennium ago . “ ‘ I do n’t recollect having to give them a number one wood ’s license or anything , ” he said , “ but I might have . ’ ”
The National Shooting Sports Foundation is an American trade tie-up that was make in 1961 and lobbied on behalf of gun manufacturer ever since . It ’s less well - lie with than the National Rifle Association , but perhaps well at its line of work . It ’s been in hassle with U.S. politicians and regulators several times since its creation .
If an NSSF appendage abuse out of melodic phrase , they ’re punished . In 2000 , gun maker Smith & Wesson agree to work with the Clinton Administration on safer handguns . The NSSF called Smith & Wesson to task over the correspondence and store across the country boycotted the company . Theyalmost went bankrupt . The FTC investigated NSSF for mastermind the boycott butdropped the caseafter a three - twelvemonth probe .
Lately , lawgiver have gone after NSSF for its insult of client information and connections to Cambridge Analytica . Senator Richard Blumenthal , a Democrat in NSSF ’s home state of Connecticut , has repeatedly knock the company for this . “ Congress deserves a full explanation of the data aggregation process , the way the data was used , and the guard that NSSF put in place to protect the individual information of gun for hire proprietor , ” he say in aletter to the lobbying grouping in 2022 .
Cambridge Analyticagunsmoney in politicsPolitics
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