Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal targets the Gun Group National Shooting Sports Foundation Over the Secret Gun Registry

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is targeting the Gun Industry Association for the way it engaged in a “voter education” scheme for tax evasion that also violated a basic principle of Second Amendment enthusiasts: compiling a detailed database of gun buyers.

The Daily Beast got e-mailwhich Blumenthal sent to the National Sports Shooting Foundation on Friday, calling the association over for allegations it compiled a list of gun owners and the types of guns they own — all to bolster voter influence campaigns.

The NSSF is made up of the country’s largest arms makers and once had a political campaign deal underway with Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct British data analytics firm that was caught interfering in the 2016 US election.

Blumenthal’s letter cites details that were revealed when emails from Cambridge Analytica were exposed Leaked 2 years ago But it did not receive much attention at the time.

“Cambridge Analytica’s claim that the NSSF maintains a database, Registry-style, of the personal information of gun owners should come as a surprise to millions of law-abiding gun owners, many of whom, no doubt, would never agree to firearm manufacturers or retailers to keep their sensitive personal data. and their sharing and disclosure for political purposes,” Blumenthal wrote.

His letter was addressed to NSSF President Joseph Bartozi. The industry group did not respond to questions about it sent by The Daily Beast on Friday.

Blumenthal, who has a track record of attacking federal agencies and large corporations for violating Americans’ privacy rights, told the group that “Congress deserves a full explanation” and noted “the implications of gun regulation as well as protecting consumer privacy and data security risks.”

As evidence, the senator cited a set of emails from Cambridge Analytica outlining its business relationship with the NSSF at the time. But it also provides a window into the alleged questionable activity by the Firearms Group, a nonprofit organization that has restrictions on how it engages in lobbying activity.

according to IRS rules, a nonprofit that spends big money on political influence campaigns, must later contact donors and pass an accounting problem: directing them to reduce the tax deduction for their individual donations. It’s called “agent tax”.

In a single email in February 2016, Matt Oczkowski, a Cambridge Analytica strategist, described how the Firearms Manufacturers Association engages in political campaigns and evades this type of tax, reaching just the right voters by tapping into a massive consumer database it has accumulated before. A lobbyist in the arms industry for a long time.

“NSSF is a trade organization made up of all gun manufacturers who sell in the United States. Each year, they run a large campaign aimed at ‘voter education.’ They call it voter education to avoid corporate agent tax by directly endorsing any candidate and focusing on issues” Okzkowski wrote to his staff.

“Pat O’Malley, our contact with access to the funds, has been running this campaign on their behalf since 2002 and has been almost entirely direct mail. Pat has been leveraging a database of firearms manufacturer warranty cards (compiled by firearms companies) to determine his targeting In major states (millions of people, if they bought a gun, what kind of guns they bought) ”, he continued.

The analyst goes on to explain what Cambridge Analytica – which was co-founded by right-winger Steve Bannon and helped the Trump campaign at the time – would do with the new information.

“We will match this data with our database, model it, augment it with our gun data, identify groups of persuasive voters who support gun rights and also turn them into voting,” Oczykowski wrote. “The campaign trip will be from April to November.”

Oczkowski, who leads analytics firm HUMN Behavior and advised the Trump 2020 campaign, did not respond to a request for comment.

For decades, gun rights advocates have warned that amassing a database would pose an existential threat to American freedom, essentially giving the authoritarian government a list of people to target first during a dictatorial campaign. That’s why four separate legal provisions prohibit national firearm registration, according to a recent report by Congressional Research Service.

The gun industry’s favorite bogeyman is the ATF—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives—and for decades since 1979, Congress has prohibited that agency from using any funding whatsoever to pay for the “consolidation or centralization” of any gun store purchase records.

Meanwhile, the FBI, which conducts background checks on every gun purchased from a licensed dealer, cannot by law “establish any system for recording firearms, firearm owners, or firearms transactions”—rather than keeping only details of people who Tried to buy one but failed background check.

But the fear does not stop at the government’s surveillance. Just last month, the NSSF’s senior vice president of government and public affairs explained why it would be appalling for even a private entity to keep this list.

Larry Kane, who is also the NSSF’s top in-house lawyer, has appeared Reload a podcast On September 19 to discuss congressional bills proposed by Democrats that would give feds a close look at gun purchases — and possibly pressure banks to specify exactly firearms, ammunition and related gear on the receipt.

Speaking to independent firearms journalist Stephen Gutofsky, Kane described the action as “only fraught with opportunities for abuse.”

“You have an invasion of privacy,” is He saidand went on to explain how government agents could seize the existence of any database – in the hands of anyone.

“It’s given to law enforcement or the ATF, and then all of a sudden all of the law enforcement shows up at your door and says let’s see what you bought…You have privacy issues wrapped around exercising a fundamental constitutional right. It’s very annoying,” he He said. “They want to know what you’re buying so they can stop you from buying it.”

On Friday, The Daily Beast asked NSSF how its handling of Cambridge Analytica and its apparent backlog of consumer purchases did not violate its firm position that such a database would be an invasion of privacy. The organization did not respond before this story was published.

However, in his podcast appearances, Kane stressed that there are no exceptions.

“You could have a record of gun owners kept by private companies, which is about the same way a government database would be concerned,” Kane He said.

The NSSF has received not even a fraction of the scrutiny or hostility that anti-gun groups have directed at the National Rifle Association, which claims to represent individual gun owners but deeply respects the industry. However, the NSSF briefly received pressure after 20 first-graders and six adults were killed by a mass shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School, because the industrial group is located in the same city: Newtown, Connecticut.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for stricter gun laws, criticized the NSSF for what it called “shameful hypocrisy.”

“The gun industry has spent decades promoting fear about so-called gun owner records, but it turns out the call was coming all the time from inside the house,” said Nick Suplina, the group’s senior vice president of law and policy. “This kind of shameful hypocrisy from NSSF is exactly what we’d expect from an industry so bent on profiting over everything else.”

Historically, gunsmiths have been bad at keeping track of their customers, according to former gunsmiths director Ryan Posey, who wrote I tell everyone the book titled “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America.” Manufacturers are kept out of the loop, because guns are sold from factories to wholesalers, who then place them at federally licensed dealers.

Busse told The Daily Beast that gun companies have only recently begun to gain some insight into their customers and purchases through an alternative route: selling model-specific accessories directly to individual customers online. This list, he said, would be a goldmine — totally at odds with a longstanding principle in American gun culture.

“It has been a measurable source of frustration because they don’t know who their consumers are. If the NSSF had this list…that’s the height of the irony,” he said.

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