The family of Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was among millions of voters profiled by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and included in a gun owner database.
From Channel 4 News, the outlet that broke this story:
“Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign database, obtained by Channel 4 News in 2020, lists the assailant’s parents Matthew, and his wife Mary, 53, as living at a residence in the borough of Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh.
They were among 6.7 million people in the swing state of Pennsylvania profiled for their likely ownership of firearms. Both scored highly, with Crook’s father Matthew given particularly high scores.
Data scientists can analyse relatively small original datasets to determine the characteristics that would make someone likely, for example, to be a gun owner. Using machine learning they can generate models that match those characteristics across the population, assigning individuals a likelihood score.
The gun-related profiles which appear in the 2016 Trump campaign database range between 0 – meaning no likelihood – and 1 – a certainty.
Matthew Crooks scored highly across a range of gun-related models including: 0.99 for the likelihood of returning a warranty card for a firearms purchase; 0.95 for the likelihood of pursuing hunting sports; and 0.94 for the likelihood of shopping at the hunting retailer
Overall, averaged across all three of these measures, out of more than 19,000 people in Bethel Park, Matthew Crooks was among the top 20 highest scoring individuals.
In total, the data technique was deployed in ten swing states – scoring a total of around 50 million individuals – to find voters who could be susceptible to political messages about gun-rights, a bedrock issue in all of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns.
While the Crooks family were assigned scores derived from models, such models are not necessarily accurate and may not reflect the Crooks family’s actual views or gun ownership at that time.
Channel 4 News has approached the Trump campaign for comment.”
It would be very interesting to hear from one of the “small government” Republicans or a Conservative gun owner on how they feel about a database of gun owners. If the Democrats would have created a gun owner database, the Right would have had a complete meltdown. I don’t doubt that there would be threats to use “the 2nd amendment” against Democrats as we heard from politicians like Kari Lake in the past.
Progressives are against any kind of database of Americans existing. That is a type of surveillance that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. This story explains why Republican gun owners were recipients of pro-gun materials from the Trump campaign in 2016.
If I was a Republican and a gun owner, I would be raising hell to get my name off of that list.
