Class Action Alleges National Shooting Sports Foundation ‘Misuse[d]’ Sensitive Info of Millions of Gun Buyers

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has disregarded the privacy of millions of firearms buyers by gathering their sensitive personal information into a massive database to be used for political purposes. 

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The 24-page privacy lawsuit says that while the NSSF, a self-described trade group for the firearms industry, “talks the talk about privacy, it does not walk the walk” and has secretly convinced manufacturers and retailers to share decades of warranty cards containing gun owners’ personal information. 

According to the complaint, firearms buyers nationwide were unaware that manufacturers and retailers would share their personal data with Connecticut-based NSSF and did not agree to or authorize their information to be transferred to the group. Similarly, proposed class members had no idea the NSSF would use their personal information to target them with political messaging, the case stresses. 

“In fact, until very recently, nobody outside NSSF and the relevant firearms manufacturers or retailers had the slightest idea about these practices, because the relevant actors concealed them,” the lawsuit says. 

The seeds of the NSSF’s database were planted in the early 1990s, when industry lobbyist Richard Feldman asked a client, Intratec, the maker of the TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol, for its warranty cards, the case explains. Per the suit, gun warranty cards often contain not only contact information for a buyer but also demographic identifiers such as gender, age, socioeconomic background, interests, family income, what kind of vehicle they own and why they bought the firearm. 

According to the filing, Intratec provided Feldman with the names of 90,000 gun owners across the United States. 

The lawsuit goes on to state that years later, in the mid-1990s, Feldman shared his warranty-card idea with James Jay Baker, a lawyer for the firearms industry who, per the suit, reported directly to the president of the NSSF. Baker, “excited by the idea of an industry-wide warranty card project,” took steps to implement the initiative at the NSSF, the case says.

In 1997, Baker sent to gun industry executives a letter in which he stated, among other things, that “this as-yet-uncompiled database will be our single greatest resource for both grassroots work and [political action committee] development,” the complaint relays. 

In late 1999, the suit goes on, the NSSF board stated in a status update that initial participation in the gun-owner database was “very positive” and that it would have 400,000 names on file and available by the end of that year, with five firearm manufacturers supplying warranty card databases and others indicating their interest in the project. 

In the run-up to the 2000 presidential election, Cabela’s shared data on 356,000 customers for inclusion in the NSSF database, even though the gun and outdoor gear retailer’s own privacy policies stipulated that only a customer’s postal address could be shared with “reputable companies,” the complaint states.

All told, the NSSF database was used during the 2000 election cycle to target more than 2.5 million consumers by mail in relevant states, with the defendant later claiming that the Vote Your Sport initiative (which later became known as GunVote) was a “critical component” of George W. Bush’s election victory, the suit says. 

“Similar political efforts continued in the election cycles that followed: 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014,” the case reads. 

In April 2018, an NSSF contractor brought on board Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm responsible for the collection of the personal data of 87 million Facebook users without informed consent, to help the group “mobilize gun supporters in battleground states in the 2016 presidential election,” the lawsuit shares.

The lawsuit highlights that the NSSF, despite surreptitiously amassing gun owners’ data without consent, publicly touted its commitment to their privacy. For instance, the suit says, the NSSF “celebrated” the 2024 introduction to the United States House of Representatives of a bill titled “Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act” and later that year hailed a separate Senate bill with the same title. Both pieces of legislation aimed to protect the private financial data of citizens “exercising their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” the filing reads. 

At this point, the case continues, it might be impossible to restore the privacy of millions of gun buyers whose private data the NSSF received and used without consent. Broadly, the NSSF benefited from receiving firearms purchasers’ information despite having paid nothing for it, the complaint summarizes. 

The National Shooting Sports Foundation lawsuit looks to cover all United States residents whose personally identifiable information NSSF received, due to the person’s purchase of a firearm or ammunition, from a manufacturer or retailer of guns from 1990 to the present.

Learn all about the legal process: What is a class action lawsuit?