Gun owners, please sue over personal data in bump stock buyback, State Patrol says Apr 24, 2019 at 6:44 pm

The Washington State Patrol faces lawsuits over its potential disclosure of names and addresses of gun owners involved in a bump stock buyback program. The agency said those lawsuits are welcome.

Chris Loftis, a spokesman for the Washington State Patrol, said his agency’s buyback program for bump stocks spent its allotted $150,000 last month. Three-hundred-twenty-four gun owners statewide turned in 1,000 bump stocks, for compensation of $150 per device. The bump stocks, which can modify a semiautomatic rifle to resemble a fully automatic machine gun, have recently been banned under federal law. “To gain the voucher, you had to provide your name and address so we could process the voucher and send you a check,” he said. “What we did not foresee is that we would then subsequently receive a request for that information.” Two public disclosure requests, actually. One has since been modified and the other withdrawn.

Amy Radil reports...

Loftis said the Washington Attorney General’s office concluded that names and addresses of people who took part in the buyback– unlike the names of people who hold a concealed weapons permit – were not exempt from public disclosure and would have to be turned over in a matter of weeks. His agency alerted the gun owners that barring a legal challenge, their information would be made public. “We sent out a letter to those individuals letting them know that at that point the release of their names and addresses seemed legally unavoidable,” he said. The letter told recipients “that there was recourse, they could seek an injunction in the Superior Court, and that unless we received a court order not to release the information, we would be doing so at the end of this month.” The agency’s phones started ringing. “You had just an extraordinary volume of people calling saying, ‘I’m really concerned,'” Loftis said. Hundreds of gun owners told the State Patrol that they feared repercussions, from losing their jobs to having their homes targeted for burglaries or protests. “People had a very realistic and authentic fear that this would target their personal property and that means it would also be a public safety issue,” Loftis said.