For years, America’s most iconic gun-makers turned over sensitive personal information on hundreds of thousands of customers to political operatives.
Those operatives, in turn, secretly employed the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians running for Congress and the White House, a ProPublica investigation has found.
The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America.
At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Marlin and Mossberg, handed over names, addresses and other private data to the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF then entered the gun owners’ details into what would become a massive database.
Who TF is sending in their registration cards…?
I mean, seriously, I’ve never sent one in. I threw all of them away, along with the cards asking me to join the NRA.
Also, as I’ve said before: if Dems would drop gun control entirely–and concentrate on changing the material conditions that result in gun crime–that would absolutely gut right-wing orgs that rely on fears of gun bans and confiscations to rile up a base.
This is why i cant take republicans seriously when they argue against firearm licenses. There already is a gun registry, they made it themselves.
I am shocked that a gun company would do anything amoral.
I think you mean immoral. Amoral is not related to morals, like choosing what color socks to wear at home.
I’m sorry to say your thought is incorrect. I was using this definition: amoral - having no moral standards, restraints, or principles; unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong.
To expand on this, I was implying that morality is simply not a factor in their actions.
That’s the definition I’m going off of as well!
Ummm…I guess we are at an impasse then?
It is pretty ironic the entire time the gun industry was fueling paranoia about the government creating a database of all the gun owners they themselves were secretly creating a database of all the gun owners.
And it was from people sending in warranty cards. They put themselves on the list of gun owners they were terrified of existing.
Projection as deflection? Well I never.
One argument against gun registration was that it would let nefarious forces quickly identify gunowners
Why did the gun manufacturers get the owners’ names? Usually the manufacturers sell to dealers and the dealers sell to users, I had thought.
Do you think there might be some sort of corruption in the gun trade?
Is that even possible?
If the retailers are leaking the info, they should be mentioned too, of course.
The real answer is probably just customers doing warranty claims/registration.
I thought guns were supposed to keep you safe.
