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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.
You assume that because I don't show up on such a list that I'm unarmed. None of the shotguns that I inherited from my father are listed anywhere, but they all work perfectly well. These lists indicate permit holders, which are required for hand guns. Owners of rifles generally don't need permits.
The Newtown guns were stolen (from the mother.) The Columbine guns were acquired illegally, using a combination of outlawed third party purchasing and illegal underage sales. Very few mass shootings were done with legally acquired firearms.
...on behalf of gun rights advocates, for graphically illustrating one reason requiring gun registration is a bad idea.
Another thank you from Westchester & Rockland Organized Crime, Inc, both for providing homes to avoid for their junior members, and high-value targets for their more skilled housebreakers.
I guess the inverse of this map would be map of safe places to rob.
This is only a list of handguns, which you need a permit to own. It does not list rifles or shotguns, which make up a significant percentage of guns owned by Americans. Although it is more probable that the households that own handguns also own more of the rifles and shotguns than households without handguns, there are still many gun owning households that are not listed here. In fact, I know someone who lives in this area who is not listed, but has a rifle in her house.
Regulated != Trained.
If the Founding Fathers had meant "trained" they would have written "trained" instead of "regulated". But they didn't because it's not they they meant.
Actually no he is right, regulated means trained and properly equipped in this sense. The English language has been corrupted over time to mean strictly mean only regulated in the sense of controlled under the law.
A well regulated machine is one that has proper preventative maintenance and can preform when called upon without fail. Not because it is regulated by law to preform or function.
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!
I wonder how appealing gun ownership would be if the owners had to turn out a compulsory drill every month.
;)
Actually, Hamilton (in Federalist #29) only suggested an annual inspection - "Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year"
You'll do it in the rain, snow, and sleet, -20; you'll do it in the hot sun, 100+; you'll do it one Saturday
Aside from the pure BS nuisance factor of weather, an indoor range would make it safer and easier (for the testers) to run people through a battery of drills to demonstrate their proficiency. Though make no mistake, I have friends who would pay to spend a weekend crawling through the cold mud on a military obstacle course / rifle range (if doing so didn't require that whole "joining the military" thing).
Now, in spirit, I have absolutely nothing against something akin to Hamilton's original suggestion. The slope gets pretty damned slippery, however, when someone in power needs to decide what counts as passing. Banning civilian firearms then requires nothing more than setting the bar absurdly high - "Oh, gee, sorry, you went outside the allowed 4" spread at 100 yards, better luck next year!"
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
It 'also might be interpreted' as such but only by someone who simply refuses to check sources. The fact of the matter is the words had that meaning at the time and some of the debates around the wording are even preserved so you can see for yourself exactly how it was understood. Regulated didnt acquire the secondary meaning of 'under strict but indirect government control' until later. The original meaning of 'in good order, well prepared' is still found as well, in phrases like a well-regulated machine or in the practice of regulating shotgun bores, but it has been eclipsed in usage. So the only way that argument can be made is out of ignorance or willful deception.
Under the militia acts from that date, the militia was understood to be 'all military aged males' in a given area. Trained and organised groups raised from the militia were specifically distinguished as 'select militia.'
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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."