Gun Industry Group Caught Violating Privacy Rights of Gun Owners

 ProPublica has published an investigation of a  “covert program” in which firearms manufacturers for years shared sensitive customer information with political operatives. The secret program was conducted while the gun industry presented itself as a privacy protector and fought against government and corporate efforts to track firearms ownership.

At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson and Remington, handed over hundreds of thousands of names, addresses and other private data — without customer knowledge or consent — to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which then entered the details into what would become a massive database. The database was used to rally gun owners’ electoral support for the industry’s candidates running for the White House and Congress.

The customer information initially came from decades of warranty cards filled out and returned to gun manufacturers for rebates and repair or replacement programs. A ProPublica review of dozens of warranty cards from the 1970s through today found that some promised customers their information would be kept strictly confidential. Others said some information could be shared with third parties for marketing and sales. None of the cards informed buyers their details would be used by lobbyists and consultants to win elections.

Violating a promise of strict confidentiality on warranty cards or failing to mention that consumer information could be given to the NSSF may qualify as a deceptive practice under the Federal Trade Commission Act, privacy and legal experts said.

Founded in 1961 and currently based in Shelton, Connecticut, the NSSF represents thousands of firearms and ammunition manufacturers, distributors, retailers, publishers and shooting ranges. While not as well known as the chief lobbyist for gun owners, the National Rifle Association, the NSSF is respected and influential in business, political and gun-rights communities.

For two decades, the organization has raged against government and corporate attempts to amass information on gun buyers. As recently as this year, the NSSF pushed for laws that would prohibit credit card companies from creating special codes for firearms dealers, claiming the codes could be used to create a registry of gun purchasers.

The gun industry launched the data harvesting approximately 17 months before the 2000 election as it grappled with a cascade of financial, legal and political threats. Within three years, the NSSF’s database — filled with warranty card information and supplemented with names from voter rolls and hunting licenses — contained at least 5.5 million people. The information was central to what NSSF called its "voter education program", which involved sending letters, postcards and later emails to persuade gun buyers to vote for the firearms industry’s preferred political candidates.

Because privacy laws shield the names of firearm purchasers from public view, the data NSSF obtained gave it a unique ability to identify and contact large numbers of gun owners or shooting sports enthusiasts.

In April 2016, a contractor on NSSF’s voter education project delivered a large cache of data to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm credited with playing a key role in Trump’s narrow victory that year, according to internal Cambridge emails and documents. The data given to Cambridge included 20 years of gun owners’ warranty card information as well as a separate database of customers from Cabela’s, a sporting goods retailer with approximately 70 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Cambridge combined the NSSF data with a wide array of sensitive particulars obtained from commercial data brokers. It included people’s income, their debts, their religion, where they filled prescriptions, their children’s ages and purchases they made for their kids. For women, it revealed intimate elements such as whether the underwear and other clothes they purchased were plus size or petite.

The information was used to create psychological profiles of gun owners and assign scores to behavioral traits, such as neuroticism and agreeableness. With the NSSF supporting Trump and pro-gun congressional candidates, the profiles helped Cambridge tailor the NSSF’s political messages to voters based on their personalities.