Iconic gun-makers gave sensitive customer information to political operatives

[nfriedly]

The reason the headline doesn't say which iconic gun-makers is apparently because it was a whole bunch of them:

> 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.

[brodouevencode]

The reason gun owners do not like government registries is because they may be used for targeting those owners for compulsory buy-back or confiscation programs. While the deceit of the manufacturers is indeed abhorrent, owners are not afraid of manufacturers showing up at their door.

It is two different things, and both are bad (but one is way worse).

[mrguyorama]

Except companies like Palintir show that there's nothing to stop law enforcement from buying exactly those same lists.

[rootusrootus]

That's just conspiracy theory. The government has no appetite for such a thing, not even a tiny bit. The best we could hope for is an extremely well funded voluntary buy-back program. Offer a thousand bucks each no questions asked (and no silly loopholes like turning in empty rocker launcher tubes, and exclusions for newly created weapons) and we could take a huge number of guns off the streets. Would cost a fair amount of money, sure, but at the scale of the federal government as a non-recurring cost it is entirely feasible. Economically, I mean, not politically.

[WaxProlix]

But the manufacturers re-shared that information with the government, isn't that the point of the article?

[some_random]

Is there any other civil rights fight going on now that's more vicious than the fight over firearms rights? Maybe abortion rights, although I don't know of Planned Parenthood doing anything like this.

[falcolas]

State attorney generals are suing hospitals in other states to obtain information on both transgender and pregnant folk's visits, with the intent to use that information to prosecute those people in the AG's state.

I'm not sure if that counts by your measure, but it involves the government directly.

[MBCook]

What projection?

They found a bunch of manufacturers giving away customer information for lobbying purposes. Customers didn’t enter it for that, they did it for warrantees. In some cases as shown, the warranty cards explicitly stated they wouldn’t give it to anyone else.

I feel like if this was anything else but guns people here would be outraged about the privacy invasion/data sharing aspect.

But instead people appear to be mad about anything else they can find.

[burnte]

It's an intentional tactic. You accuse someone else of what you are doing so when the complaints and accusation come out that you're doing it, people already have decided either it doesn't matter/just finger pointing, or "well, looks like everyone is doing it." It's an inoculation against future accusations.

[water-data-dude]

The gun manufacturers? Their whole business is projection, isn’t it?

[tiahura]

[flagged]

[hn_throwaway_99]

It's an actual requirement to give your personal information to gun stores when buying a gun so they can do a background check. They are prohibited by law from using that info for purposes like marketing, but they still have to collect and store it, and I'm sure all of them don't have great privacy policies. Even morons in the 1990s understood that.

[_blk]

“The hypocrisy of warning about a governmental registry and at the same time establishing a private registry for political purposes is stunning,”

So does he suggest that databases on advertisement/customer preferences, voters, ... be run by the govt?

All debatable but I'll argue the constitution never gave the govt the right to know who owns guns since the ratification of the 2nd amendment, the purpose of which is exactly to defend against unconstitutional govt acts. So per se, that means if it's legal to be tracked, it has to be done in private registries.

[_ea1k]

While I don't like manufacturers doing this, the comparison to government gun registries is indeed strange.

The manufacturers didn't compel buyers to provide this information with the thread of prison time, and perhaps more importantly, they didn't compel buyers to inform the manufacturer of every subsequent transfer.

[MBCook]

I don’t think that’s their point.

Their point is that all the hand wringing over privacy they use as the reason to prevent any kind of registration (whatever you think of it) seems very incongruous with giving away warranty information, which often they explicitly said they wouldn’t do, to whatever political cause they want.

It looks extremely hypocritical and in many cases violated a promise to the customers.

Yes the consequence of the government having a list instead of a lobbying group is very different.

The issue is the lobbying group shouldn’t have had it period.

[gigaflop]

I've heard a lot over the years about how registries are a step towards confiscation. A bit conspiratorial, but also not totally unfounded.

Now that the government knows that this database exists, it seems like a partially-complete registry could be a lawsuit (and years of appeals) away.

The participants of this may have accidentally built their own Torment Nexus.

[goodluckchuck]

What’s wrong with this? If I shop at Joe’s Grocery, then it’s no secret that I’m allowed to tell my county commissioner about the fact that Joe sold me a banana.

Are they saying that Joe can’t tell the county commission that I bought a banana?

This is all just stuff we learn. It’s basic freedom of speech.

Sure, if I paid Joe $2 to keep it secret because my wife thinks I’m allergic… that’s different.

[BobaFloutist]

>Are they saying that Joe can’t tell the county commission that I bought a banana?

Yes, that's what gun-owners have been saying for decades about gun sellers.

[kyleblarson]

It is unlikely that the government is going to send armed men to take away your bananas.

[AlexandrB]

It's weird how this article is ostensibly about the violation of gun-owners' privacy, but can't help but wander into the 2nd amendment discussion with sentences like:

> Last month at a high school in Georgia, a 14-year-old used an assault rifle to kill two students and two teachers and wound seven more people.

The assault rifle in question is an "AR-15 style rifle". I.e. not an assault rifle.

> Semi-automatic-only rifles like the Colt AR-15 are not assault rifles; they do not have select-fire capabilities.[1]

In conclusion, I don't know who this article is for. Gun owners and pro 2nd amendment readers will probably be put off by technical errors like this and the thinly veiled contempt for gun ownership. Many non-gun owners and anti-2nd amendment readers will probably think: "good, fuck em".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle

[matthewdgreen]

The article is reporting on a privacy violation. If the fact that it also expresses opinions you dislike makes you want to disregard those facts -- then you're making bad decisions and you should do better.

Personally I think it's valuable to have this information out there. Both for the folks whose privacy was violated, and for people who are concerned about how closely the gun industry works to coordinate its customer database with lobbying groups. (PS I own a gun and don't like anything about this news, from either of those perspectives.)

[rootusrootus]

> Gun owners and pro 2nd amendment readers

I'm a gun owner and I can overlook them using a term in a way that it is popularly used among laypeople, even if it is technically not correct [0]. Discarding the content of the article on that premise would just be abdicating my responsibility to think.

[0] I gotta say, though, who exactly gets to insist on the definition of a general term like assault rifle? Seems like another instance of useless gatekeeping. A distraction.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Depending on the state, scary features like a carry handle or a bayonet mount upgrade a semi-auto to banned status. Bayonet on a bolt action? No problem.

[jjulius]

Can you really blame people for all of the confusion around whether or not an "AR-something" is 'technically' an "assault rifle"? I mean, if you go to the Wiki article that you cited, the piece you quoted links to the Wiki article about the Colt AR-15, which says:

>The term "AR-15" is a Colt registered trademark which it uses only to refer to its line of semi-automatic rifles.

So, yeah, sure, it's not technically an automatic rifle, but if the manufacturer is going to call it a semi-automatic, I'm not going to fault the average joe for not getting it perfect. "Semi" is halfway there, or at least "is that thing to a degree", after all.

To be entirely honest, the whole semantics debate around "BuT iT'S nOt AuToMaTiC" misses the forest for the trees and shouldn't be given much space. As another person said, a distraction.