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New York Paper Uses Public Records To Publish Gun-Owner Map
New submitter Isaac-1 writes "First it was the sex offenders being mapped using public records, now it seems to be gun owners — I wonder who will be next? It seems a newspaper in New York has published an interactive map with the names and addresses of people with [handguns]."
It's happened before: In 2007, Virginia's Roanoke Times raised the ire of many gun owners by publishing a database of Virginia's gun permit holders that it assembled based on public records inquiries. (The paper later withdrew that database.) Similarly, WRAL-TV in North Carolina published a database earlier this year with searchable map of (partially redacted) information about permit holders in that state, and Philadelphia made the news for a similar disclosure — complete with interactive map and addresses — of hundreds of gun permit applicants and holders.
Or it's a list of prospective homeowners with property worth stealing. Or a list of people who are trying to hide from abusive exes who got gun permits to protect themselves. Why is the list of permit holders anybody else's business?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
According to the article, they obtained the information through "Freedom of Information" laws. By your reasoning, shouldn't I be able to obtain your social security number, credit score, and medical information through the same laws?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Does gun ownership make for a safer, better, society, or something else? Statistical correlation is not the same thing as causality, but what do these facts tell us?
Which gives lie to this sort of stunt. Ostensibly, you do this sort of thing for public safety. But if you facilitate the theft of guns, by definition you're helping to remove guns from the hands of people who follow laws and put them in the hands of criminals. Nevertheless, this sort of stunt is done because the issue is political and you have to win political battles because the other side is full of bad people.
I guess the inverse of this map would be map of safe places to rob.
Guns by themselves are just as inert as rock music. For fucks sake this is political and evil at its core.
I thought that owing a gun was supposed to deter crime? Be proud, put up an "armed response" sign on your front door.
If gun ownership is to deter crime en masse, then it's important for it not to be known who has a gun and who does not. The risk is what truly matters: someone specifically looking for a gun to steal needs to not be able to be sure which houses have them, and someone not looking for a weapon needs to not know which houses will bring no chance of armed response.
Yes, a few irrational folks might be scared to not know who has the Big Scary Weapons. That is their problem, and no one else's.
I think a citation is needed to corroborate the claim vis-à-vis regulated = trained.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Meaning_of_.22well_regulated_militia.22
I wonder how appealing gun ownership would be if the owners had to turn out once a month to drill.
I'd say most would enjoy belonging to and participating with a group of like-minded individuals, but the FBI has a history of not liking these kinds of things. Isn't a powerful government great? Let's give up more of our individual sovereignty!
You miss the point. Weapons shouldn't be registered to start with. The state shouldn't have any idea who owns what. It's none of their business. The only people whose business it is, is mine, the wife's the children's, and whoever the hell tries to break into my home. That's it.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
So, you follow the NRA line that we should arm all the teachers and students so they can defend themselves against Obama's stormtroopers? How long do you think they'd last?
Longer than they would if they were unarmed.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
He has a good point since GP committed the initial fallacy of saying that an inanimate object is a risk to others.
Chemical and nuclear weapons are inanimate objects too. So are poorly-designed bridges and childrens' toys.
Inanimate objects can be a risk to others. The risk may depend on context but that is not a fallacy.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
More to the point, the right to keep and bear arms isn't contingent on militia membership at all, and it never was. The second amendment doesn't even presume to grant the right. It acknowledges it as pre-existing, it cites one reason why it's important to preserve it, and specifically prohibits the federal government from infringing it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."