Popular gun safe company Liberty Safe is facing intense backlash after providing the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the password to a customer's safe at the law enforcement agency's request, and conservative influencers are now calling for boycotting the brand.
Outrage against the Utah-based safe manufacturer began Monday after conservative commentators Keith and Kevin Hodge, known as the Hodge Twins, posted the revelation on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
"Last week, a friend of ours was raided by the feds over J6, his name is Nathan Hughes and he’s from Fayetteville, Arkansas," the post reads, which notes in the report that "The feds called the manufacturer of his Liberty Gun Safe and got the passcode to get into it too. All for protesting at the Capitol over 2 1/2 years ago."
Nathan Hughes himself confirmed the story the next day, saying in a video posted on X that Liberty Safe gave the FBI "a master code to get into my gun safe." He added, "Pretty crazy, didn't know safe companies would do that, so I feel like a lot of our gun safes are not actually safe."
Liberty Safe admitted in a statement Tuesday that it gave the FBI the access code to the safe of an individual for whom the FBI had a warrant to search their property after receiving the agency's request on Aug. 30.
"Liberty Safe is devoted to protecting the personal property and 2nd amendment rights of our customers and has repeatedly denied requests for access codes without a warrant in the past," the statement reads. "We do not give out combinations without proper legal documentation being provided by authorities."
The statement did not appease Liberty's critics, who immediately began calling for boycotting the company in the same fashion as Bud Light, which has suffered substantial losses in sales after the Anheuser-Busch InBev brand partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney earlier this year in a marketing effort that caused many beer drinkers to shun it.
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"[A]bsent a court order, you weren’t required to give them anything," Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, replied in response to Liberty's initial statement. "You voluntarily gave out a combination over a warrant, per your own release, that didn’t apply to you or your property. Maybe start marketing your stuff as Bud Light storage."
Michael Seifert, founder of conservative online marketplace PublicSq., agreed.
"No Safe company should ever have access to the property of their customers, let alone sell them out to the feds," Seifert wrote on X in reaction to Liberty's statement. "It's an unbelievable breach of privacy. Give them the Bud Light treatment."
Liberty's X account continued to be bombarded with angry messages from users on Wednesday, and late that evening the company posted a three-page statement in response to the pushback and announced changes to its policies.
The company said in its statement that it "has long adhered to industry standards by maintaining a secure database of factory-set combinations" as a courtesy to customers who might need them for various reasons, but that effective immediately, existing customers may visit the website and "fill out the form to have records of their access codes expunged."
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"We have also revised our policies around cooperation with law enforcement," Liberty's statement reads. "Going forward we will require a subpoena that legally compels Liberty Safe to supply access codes but can only do so if these codes still exist in our system."
