Senator Richard Blumenthal is questioning a trade organization's efforts to safeguard the private information of American gun owners.  He wrote to the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation for more information about the way in which the NSSF and gun manufacturers use an maintain warranty information and other personally identifiable information.  This stems from leaked 2016 Cambridge Analytica emails revealing NSSF contracted with Cambridge Analytica to collect and use gun owners’ personal information and data for political purposes.  According to those documents, they worked together during the 2016 election cycle on a “voter education” campaign, where employees built a database of firearms manufacturing warranty cards collected by firearms companies. The data included information of people who bought a gun and what kind of gun they bought, and was then used to determine the targeting of persuadable voters in battleground states. Blumenthal called the database akin to a registry and said it should come as a surprise to millions of law abiding gun owners, many of whom would never have consented for firearms manufacturers or retailers to retain, share, and expose their sensitive personal data for political purposes.