Ever wonder how you landed up on the NRA's mailing list

[gejohnston]

even though you never joined or gave ILA a dime in the past? If the feds seriously wanted to register us, just have the NSA hack the NRA's database.

The National Rifle Association has rallied gun-owners — and raised tens of millions of dollars — campaigning against the threat of a national database of firearms or their owners.

But in fact, the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. 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.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/stevefriess/how-the-nra-built-a-massive-secret-database-of-gun-owners

[jimmy the one]

1. posting incognito

I'm posting this with a bag over groucho's head since I'm also recommending this gejohnston OP.

The NRA won’t say how many names and what other personal information is in its database, but former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman estimates they keep tabs on “tens of millions of people.” “There’s nothing that prevents them from mailing those people,” said Feldman, who split with the NRA in the mid-1990s ..

Most of these activities aim to convert gun owners into dues-paying NRA members or contributors to the NRA’s political action committee.. new science of voter modeling regard gun ownership as a key predictor of someone’s politics regardless of whether they are NRA members, and the NRA uses those non-members to extend its influence by finding just the right language and tone to speak to them {AKA PROPAGUNDA}

The data “gives the NRA more power,” Bond said. “It’s valuable politically because what it does is, it extends the reach of its political leverage beyond NRA members. They have gun owners, not just NRA members.”

[beevul]

4. " by finding just the right language and tone to speak to them {AKA PROPAGUNDA}"

Pot meet the much larger kettle:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1172129602

[rrneck]

2. It's the same double bind.

Demands for full disclosure of information about gun ownership stovepipes power to orgs like the NRA for use to gain political power. The NRA is just another corporation feeding at the public trough for private profit. They can legitimately use information garnered by theit representatives (firearms trainers) for marketing purposes, but information required by the government is the property of the people and should not be used by a lobbyist organization to keep their corporate jet in the air.

[Eleanors38]

3. My brother and I, with the tech savvy of 2-tube radios,

Joked about the de facto registration of gun-owners via the NRA's mailing lists.

Anyone wanna bet the feds don't have a list now?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. DU Rec

[virginia mountainman]

6. hmmm...

http://lists.nextmark.com/market;jsessionid=CC02F3145EB09B2427665B6E2351B72C?page=order/online/datacard&id=163065

[gejohnston]

7. if only I could afford it.................