Their offense in the eyes of the reporters and editors? The possession of a legally registered hand gun. The penalty imposed by these soi-disant judges for this crime? An interactive map revealing the names and addresses tens of thousands of people who only followed the law.
Needless to say such an egregious invasion of privacy provoked a deservedly vigorous response. While many have pointed out their flagrant folly in establishing 'safe' areas for criminals to operate, I'd like to point out another failure of foresight on the part of the paper that seems to have gone largely unmentioned.
Not all of those weapons are in the hands of collectors, sportsman, and target shooters. I'd venture a guess that a fair percentage of the guns are registered to those who might someday have occasion to need them. Judges, lawyers, police, probation and parole officers, and corrections officers, either active or retired, who by virtue of doing the jobs we pay them for, have acquired the animus of the worst among us. Add to them all those hiding in fear from abusive former partners, and the witnesses whose testimony has sent criminals to jail. All of their lives have been endangered by the papers depraved indifference to who and where they are, and why they own a gun.
A free press is fundamentally a good thing, but when it proclaims itself the ultimate arbiter of the possessions and privacy of law abiding citizens, and in doing so endangers their lives and families, it has gone way beyond any reasonable interpretation of anyone's "right to know".
In at least one New York county, the administration understands that. Putnam County
"There is the rule of law, and there is right and wrong and the Journal News is clearly wrong," Sant said in a statement. "I could not live with myself if one Putnam pistol permit holder was put in harm's way, for the sole purpose of selling newspapers."
Of course, with the usual insufferable arrogance of the press, the paper will doubtless be contesting that decision. Stay tuned.
This is the same 'news' organization that more recently attempted to proffer that one could simply order a firearm on the internet and have it shipped to ones home, absent background check.
ReplyDeleteThey presented this falsehood in their weak attempt to defend their position of posting government information about gun owners. Note the difference, Government information is not the same as Public information, and as such should not be able to be disseminated by random busybodies.
This is the same 'news' organization that attempted to proffer the notion that one could simply order a firearm on the internet and receive it at home, absent background check.
ReplyDeleteThey did this in a weak attempt to defend their action of publishing the names and addresses [where even a simple non-attributed cluster map would have sufficed] of lawfully registered gun owners. An act they would likely not commit if the subject were convicted felons.
This data was Government information, not public information, and as such should have been protected from dissemination by busybodies with political agendas.
"Guest" is me. I'm not sure why this is being buggy for me.
ReplyDeleteInvasion of privacy is now the norm -- in the name of the Information Age, of course.
ReplyDeleteIntolerance, thy name is Democrat.
ReplyDeleteViburnum: It's about time you finished a post... ;-)
ReplyDeleteHere's another unintended consequence of this newspaper's self-righteous idiocy: It tells burglars where the gun-free zones are, making non-gun owner's targets for home break-ins.
Criminals love unarmed victims!
http://www.examiner.com/article/former-fbi-burglary-suspect-on-newspaper-gun-map-newspaper-list-like-gold
Obviously the NY Journal News has an agenda: an anti-gun agenda. I doubt they would be willing to publish a map with names and addresses of those who had Planned Parennthood abortions because that would be against their agenda.
ReplyDeleteNo, probably not... but they got really P.O'd when New Rochelle Talk posted the names and addresses of all their employees. Which apparently under state law is also public information.
ReplyDeleteI see a list of people who signed up for harassment. I'll register my guns when they pry them from my cold dead hands.
ReplyDelete"Being included in these maps does not mean the individual at a specific location owns a weapon, just that they are licensed to do so."
ReplyDeleteLicensed to do so? The right to keep and bear arms pre-exists the Constitution as a natural right, and the Constitution specifically forbids any abridgement of this right. ALL gun laws are unconstitutional, and people trying to enforce them should be shot as traitors.
I think as part of any new national gun legislation, one law should be that gun registrant lists should be excluded from FOIA requirements.
ReplyDeleteIt is extremely irresponsible to disclose this information. Only law enforcement, judicial, and regulatory bodies should be availed registrant information, and they should not be allowed to share it with the public unless it is relevant to a particular criminal case.
Think about abused women in hiding, informants, police and guards, and on and on.
This paper did something extremely irresponsible and it's time congress, or at least the states, reacts to prevent this in the future.
And as Silver points out, by default this paper has created a list of ostensibly unarmed people.
We can not have responsible gun regulation while we also have irresponsible registrant disclosure. This is a two-way street, and there must be rules of both sides of the road.
JMJ
When the government, itself, becomes Public Enemy Number One, the only sane thing to do is to GO UNDERGROUND.
ReplyDeleteWhen the law is unjust and insane and administered by an equally unjust, insane establishment determined NOT to represent our best interests as individual citizens, it is our RIGHT to ALTER -- or better yet -- ABOLISH the Establishment.
"LIVE FREE -- OR DIE!
~ FreeThinke
I read somewhere recently "The men who take our guns will be protected by guns for the rest of their lives". My husband is threatened every day on his job. We cannot afford fancy armed guards "men in black" types. Our man in black is our gun. Just look at the dirt bag that invaded a women's home - in Georgia I think. She retreated into a crawl space in her home, he followed, she shot him. This P#s*y cried and wined for help along the side of the road. He will get out of jail and victimize someone else not so lucky and brave with a gun.
ReplyDelete