The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade group, has run into some trouble with its data in the past. As The Trace’s Will Van Sant reported last summer, the NSSF derailed a challenge to Colorado’s restrictions on large-capacity ammunition magazines after it refused to allow its researcher to be deposed in the case. That research dealt with a fundamental issue — whether magazines that exceed Colorado’s 15-round limit are in “common use” — and it wasn’t the first time it had been questioned in court.
The NSSF’s trouble this time, however, isn’t with flimsy data. It’s with data that became frighteningly revealing.
Over the past several months, ProPublica has published a series of stories uncovering how gunmakers gave the NSSF personal information about their customers, sharing intimate data without gun buyers’ knowledge or consent. ProPublica’s investigation further revealed how the NSSF then teamed up with the now-disgraced consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to use its database of gun owners and others to elect pro-gun politicians in the 2016 election. The latest story in the series covers the scope of the campaign to influence voters’ decisions in 2016. The information goes beyond gun owners’ names and addresses.
“The political consultancy analyzed thousands of details about the lives of people in the NSSF’s enormous database,” ProPublica’s Corey G. Johnson reports. “Were they shopaholics? Did they gamble? Did women buy plus-size or petite underwear?”
Give Johnson’s piece a read. It reveals not only what the campaign knew about gun buyers, but also the perils associated with the availability of our personal data. And if you’d like to learn more about the NSSF, you can find a primer in this story from last year.
From The Trace
What Kash Patel’s Leadership Could Mean for the ATF: Patel, the FBI director and newly appointed head of the nation’s top firearms regulator, is cozy with the most extreme flank of the gun rights movement.
Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons Cover Gun Charges, Too, Says Justice Department: Prosecutors have moved to dismiss cases against three accused rioters who were found with firearms when law enforcement searched their homes.
What to Know Today
The Supreme Court is slated to hear oral arguments in Mexico’s lawsuit against U.S. gunmakers tomorrow. Mexico has accused the manufacturers — including Glock, Smith & Wesson, and Colt — of aiding and abetting the trafficking of weapons across the border, causing violence in the country to soar; the manufacturers claim they’re immune from the lawsuit because of a federal law that protects gunmakers from being held liable for crimes committed with their products. Jonathan Lowy, a longtime gun reform advocate who is representing Mexico, told The Trace last year that, should justices rule against the gunmakers, “the U.S. would be an even greater beneficiary than Mexico, because while Mexico is subject to this flood of crime guns as a result of trafficking and reckless gun industry practices, the U.S. is even more subject to those harms.” [Courthouse News]
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson established a task force to address extremism within all city agencies. Community members want the Chicago Police Department to be prioritized — they’re frustrated that active officers with known links to the far-right Oath Keepers militia haven’t been disciplined and remain on the force. [The TRiiBE]
Nearly 100 tribal leaders testified in congressional appropriations hearings to air concerns over federal budget cuts, including over funding for law enforcement to help with rising gun violence and violent crime on tribal lands. Separately, a bill making its way through the Oregon Legislature could be a model for states that may soon need to fill the gap: The legislation would address the “epidemic of violence” around the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people, and dedicate state staffers to victim services and violence prevention for Native communities. [ICT/InvestigateWest]
Missouri’s GOP trifecta is pushing to retake control of the St. Louis Police Department, which was under the state’s purview from just before the Civil War to 2012, when voters restored local authority. The issue is creating complex divisions within the city and state, and part of a pattern of overriding the will of voters in Missouri. [ProPublica]
Marty Daniel, the founder of Daniel Defense, a gun manufacturer that produced the rifle used in the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has been busy. Last week, Daniel released a video endorsing “reform” candidates for the National Rifle Association’s board; earlier in February, Daniel testified in favor of a Georgia bill that would expose banking institutions to lawsuits if they drop customers because of “cancel culture,” a term used by the legislation’s primary sponsor. [The Reload/The Current]
California Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur is facing backlash over a proposal to narrow the state’s definition of “justifiable homicide,” which would require people using guns for self-defense to deescalate a violent situation when they can, and penalize people for using more force than necessary in self-defense shootings. Zbur said on social media that the bill is intended to criminalize shooters like Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when he was a teenager in 2020; Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of all charges stemming from the shooting, then promised to testify against the bill. [Politico]
Data Point
70,040 — the number of instances of defensive gun use per year, according to National Crime Victimization Survey data spanning 2014 to 2018. There are about seven times more gun crimes per year than instances of defensive gun use, according to the survey. [The Trace]
Non Sequitur
The Neighborhood Spat That Went Nuclear
How an argument over backyard swimming lessons sent a gated community off the deep end. [Texas Monthly]
