The NRA is also very careful to support people who don't actually violate gun laws (whether because they are just normal people with guns for hunting/protection or people exploiting loopholes that - regardless of your feelings towards them - are codified by law), or who are at least making some attempt at a credible argument (trying to phrase this as politically neutral as possible. I'm not here to debate their policy, just observe their actions) for the legitimate need for it. The way the NRA gets support is from people who want to make it easier to legally own guns. If we are being honest, "hardened inner city thugs" are not people who care whether the gun they have is legal or not, just whether or not it's easy to get. The NRA's explicit mission is more specific than make guns easy to get. It's make them easier to get legally. Again, this supports the need for a hyperspecific single issue organization that focuses on privacy. The NRA gets a lot of traction by focusing on freedom and the Constitution. A privacy organization would be wise to take note of what plays with the NRA - worries about government databases of guns should be very easy to relate to actual government databases of communications.

It will seldom if ever blow up in the media---did you hear about the publishing of gun owner names and addresses in various parts of New York, let alone a big media backlash???---but it is something we gun owners know about.

For both causes we're going to have to depend a lot on other methods of publicity. E.g. I'll bet you haven't heard that the Democratic administration running Missouri illegally gave the Social Security Administration the entire list of the state's concealed carry licensees.

This is damoncali's point. There is a huge opportunity here for both sides. The NRA gets to shine a light on illegal surveillance (or whatever you want to call it) without having to simultaneously fight the battle over guns. They can fight that battle separately, while at the same, any major wins for privacy are generally wins for the NRA in general. It goes both ways too. The NRA is extremely influential (imagine the impact the NRA announcing it would score the vote on Amash Amendment?) and are possibly the most savvy group of lobbyists in the history of democratic politics.

The NRA will make sure that whatever they do, it will be in the context of guns. It's what they do and with good reason.

My point is more that some privacy advocates and some gun advocates share their distrust of governmental data snooping. The NRA has long fought data collection/abuse about gun owners and is well used to doing do. It would behoove the privacy movement to learn from and work with the NRA on the issue as it pertains to guns, because that knowledge will be useful in the more general case.

It may be his point (not going to parse that), but it's not going to happen. As I've described elsewhere in this thread the NRA is not going to stray from its single issue unless something directly impinges on it, like McCain-Feingold's prohibitions on its core political speech. It's a very critical part of why we're even discussing it's effectiveness; asking it to be less effective because you'd like having its muscle in your corner is not to the point.

My point is that there is a large constituent in the NRA that is very receptive to the idea that government databases of private citizen actions represent a slippery. I'd also argue that courts finding it lawful (or tolerably unlawful or whatever euphemism we'll be fed) would directly impinge on the NRA's mission as much as McCain-Feingold. A lot of card carrying NRA members still remember being grouped in with "domestic terrorists" for owning guns back in the early Napolitano tenure.