It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country’s largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby’s secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy. That database has been built through years of acquiring gun permit registration lists from state and county offices, gathering names of new owners from the thousands of gun-safety classes taught by NRA-certified instructors and by buying lists of attendees of gun shows, subscribers to gun magazines and more, BuzzFeed has learned. The result: a Big Data powerhouse that deploys the same high-tech tactics all year round that the vaunted Obama campaign used to win two presidential elections.
Remember when Wayne LaPierre and the rest of the screaming ninnies at the National Rifle Association were screaming about how background checks would lead inevitably to a federal database of gun owners? And how that database would be used by gun-grabbing Liberals to deprive good, red-blooded, God-fearing, patriotic Americans of their sacrosanct and inviolable 2nd Amendment rights (to own whatever weaponry their black hearts desire)? Never mind that the background check bill contained language that expressly forbade the creation of such a database…and made it a felony? Remember how not even that was enough to satisfy the gun nuts, who were foaming at the mouth over…well, I’m not at all certain what they were so exercised over…what turned about to be so much smoke and mirrors?
It turns out that that there’s already a huge national database of American gun owners, one that was created without the consent or knowledge of said gun owners. Now, I know what you’re thinking; it must be the work of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, right? Or perhaps the FBI? Or may even the White House Office of Pissing on Gun Nuts? Nope; the database is the creation of…wait for it…the National Rifle Association. It seems the bleating, weeping, and gnashing of teeth wasn’t so much because the NRA feared for the 2nd Amendment; they just didn’t want the competition.
Way to go, America. These are the moral midgets you’ve ceded the debate over gun control to. Then again, we shouldn’t be expecting an open and honest debate from hypocrites who care more about shilling for the gun industry than the lives of innocent men, women, and children.