At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington and Mossberg, secretly handed over names, addresses and other data to lobbyists, who used the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians.

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.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    1·
    29 minutes ago

    For years I’ve argued that the gun lobby is for manufacturers, not owners. This is a concrete example of them prioritizing the former over the latter.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
    17·
    2 hours ago

    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.

    I was going to mention exactly this, but it seems the article already beat me to it.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
    52·
    2 hours ago

    Something tells me gun nuts will waive away the violation of privacy that gun companies sharing gun purchasing into with government officials represents.

    • AhismaMiasma@lemm.ee
      21·
      55 minutes ago

      I agree, we need action to protect people’s privacy from unethical warrantless searches and monitoring.

      Snowden tried to warn us…

        • AhismaMiasma@lemm.ee
          22·
          47 minutes ago

          Oh I got the point Squid, I disagree :)

          Tell me, do you feel Jan 6th was a genuine coup attempt? As in, DJT and his ilk were actually interested in and attempting to maintain and consolidate their power in the government outside of the election results?

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            3·
            42 minutes ago

            I have no idea what you mean by “DJT and his ilk.” None of them were breaking into congress. The people that were wanted to install Trump as president and do it by executing Mike Pence. They made that very clear. So yes, that was a coup attempt. I’m not sure why you think Trump had to be directly involved to make it a coup attempt.

          • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            29 minutes ago

            The facts reported by the Jan 6th committee made it clear that it was a premeditated coup attempt.