What The Hell America!

A group representing firearms owners has asked three federal agencies to investigate how the gun industry’s main lobbying group secretly used the intimate details of weapons buyers for political purposes.

In making the request, Gun Owners for Safety cited a ProPublica investigation that detailed how the National Shooting Sports Foundation turned over sensitive personal information on gun buyers to political operatives while presenting itself as a fierce advocate for the privacy of firearms owners. The letter — sent last week to the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — called the NSSF’s secret program that spanned nearly two decades “underhanded.”

“Gun owners’ privacy is not a partisan or ideological issue,” wrote Malcolm Smith, a Gun Owners for Safety member. “No matter the industry, exploiting customers’ private data like their underwear size and children’s ages in a secret scheme is reprehensible and cannot be permitted.”

Gun Owners for Safety has been operated since 2019 by the gun violence prevention organization Giffords, which was co-founded by Gabby Giffords, the Arizona lawmaker who survived an attempted assassination in 2011. It has chapters in nine states and consists of gun owners and Second Amendment supporters who believe in what they call “common sense” measures to reduce gun-related deaths like safety locks and improved background checks on firearm purchases.

The ATF acknowledged receiving the letter but had no other comment. The FBI, FTC and NSSF didn’t respond to ProPublica’s questions and requests for comment.

The NSSF previously defended its data collection, saying its “activities are, and always have been, entirely legal and within the terms and conditions of any individual manufacturer, company, data broker, or other entity.” The organization represents thousands of firearms and ammunition manufacturers, distributors and retailers, along with 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.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told ProPublica he agreed with Smith’s call for an investigation. Last November, Blumenthal, then chair of a Senate subcommittee on privacy, asked the NSSF for details on the companies that contributed information to the trade group’s database, the type of customer details that were shared and whether the data is still being used. The trade group did not answer the senator’s questions.

“The NSSF’s disturbing, covert data collection raises serious safety and privacy concerns,” Blumenthal said. “And the American people deserve answers.”

It’s unclear how successful any request for an investigation will be under the Trump administration, especially given the NSSF’s past political support for the president.

ProPublica’s investigation identified at least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson and Remington, that handed over hundreds of thousands of names, addresses and other private data — without customer knowledge or consent — to the 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 preferred candidates running for the White House and Congress.

Privacy experts told ProPublica that companies that shared information with the NSSF may have violated federal and state prohibitions against deceptive and unfair business practices. Under federal law, companies must comply with their own privacy policies and be clear about how they will use consumers’ information, privacy experts said.

A ProPublica review of dozens of warranty cards from those gun-makers found that none of them informed buyers that their details would be used for political purposes. (Most of the companies named in the NSSF documents declined to comment or did not respond to ProPublica. One denied sharing customer data, and the new parent company of another said it had no evidence of data sharing with the NSSF under prior ownership.)

In 2016, as part of a push to get Donald Trump elected president for the first time and to help Republicans keep the Senate, the NSSF worked with the consultancy Cambridge Analytica to turbocharge the information it had on potential voters. Cambridge matched up the people in the database with 5,000 additional facts about them that it drew from other sources. The details were far-ranging. Along with the potential voters’ income, debts and religious affiliation, analysts learned whether they liked the work of the painter Thomas Kinkade and whether the underwear women had purchased was plus size or petite.

ProPublica obtained a portion of the NSSF database that contains the names, addresses and other information of thousands of people. ProPublica reached out to 6,000 people on the list. Almost all of those who responded, including gun owners, expressed outrage, surprise or disappointment over learning they were in the database.

In his letter seeking an investigation, Smith noted that the FBI’s new director, Kash Patel, has spoken out in favor of protecting gun owners’ privacy rights.

“Surely, then,” Smith wrote, “the FBI understands the importance of ensuring no organization or government agency maintains a secret database of firearm customers and gun owners. As many high-profile hacks and data leaks have shown, private data can easily be mishandled and exploited for nefarious purposes.

Smith, a 69-year-old retired executive of J.P. Morgan bank and registered Republican, told ProPublica his love of guns started as a teen when his father bought him a Remington rifle for bird hunting. The passion intensified over the years, and Smith started collecting guns heavily in response to political efforts to restrict gun access.

“Anytime I heard Nancy Pelosi not like something, I felt like I had to have it,” Smith said.

But he joined Giffords in 2020 after growing uncomfortable with extremism in gun rights circles. More recently, he said, the Department of Government Efficiency’s attempt to grab large amounts of confidential citizen data from the Social Security Administration and IRS inspired his request for government action. (DOGE officials did not respond to a request for comment.)

“The initial disclosures about the National Shooting Sports Foundation was an alarm bell. But now this is a four-alarm fire,” Smith said. “We’re supposed to have some sort of privacy in our lives, and apparently the NSSF decided I didn’t have to have it. And DOGE really thinks I’m not entitled to it.”