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New York Pistol Permit Owner List Leaked
An anonymous reader writes "On Friday, The Journal News caved under pressure of gun advocates and shut down the interactive maps which contained the names and addresses of licensed gun owners in upstate New York. The maps are still visible on the site, however they are simply static images. The Journal News published the interactive maps on December 23 which caused significant backlash. In a similar move, Gawker published the names of licensed gun owners in New York City without addresses. New York state Senator Greg Ball (Republican) called the removal of the data a 'huge win.' On Saturday, an anonymous user leaked the raw data used to build The Journal News maps."
how can one leak data which has been made available through a FOIA request?
Either way, it's really not anyone's business. Should we also be putting people's personal information online for current driver's license holders?
What if one of those women holding a CHL did so owing to death threats from a jealous ex? They just put her life in danger.
Or, if you want to up the "obnoxious" factor, what if they published the names and addresses of women who have had abortions?
"Outing" people is a really low political tactic and needs to be illegal.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Yes. About 2/3 of those uses are suicides, and the rest are almost all homicides with illegal guns. Gun control has no significant effect reducing either of these numbers. There is a small remainder of homicides committed with legally owned guns and accidents, but many legal products are far more dangerous. Furthermore, there is no justification for creating intrusive government regulation that prevents me from committing suicide with a gun.
Because they make any real, useful, gun control much less likely to happen. Their grandstanding is counter productive.
For example you try and say "Hey, we really should register firearms. After all you register your car, why not guns too? It would allow for some tracking and accountability, and in the event someone becomes a prohibited person easier allow courts to determine if they have any guns that need to be surrendered." Well the gun lobby shoots back with "No, unacceptable, if you have a registry it can be used to target gun owners." You respond "That's silly, it would be used only for lawful purposes by the proper authorities."
Then, this happens, in a place that has a gun registry. Now the gun lobby doesn't have to talk in hypotheticals, or other nations, they can point to something that happened right in America that is precisely the kind of shit they are talking about. Now more moderate gun owners, who might have been amenable, or at least accepting, of the idea hate it because they believe what the gun lobby is saying.
Gun haters have to accept and get over the fact that guns are NOT going to be banned, period, end of story, unless the second amendment is repealed. All kinds of arguments have been tried and all have failed, the supreme court has ruled that the 2nd does in fact mean that gun ownership is a protected, individual, right.
As such trying stupid shit to do things that are bans but not in name, or to harass or make things difficult for gun owners are counter productive. All they do is polarize things, convince gun owners that any and all controls are bad because they'll be abused.
Stunts like this are nothing but harmful.
There is no public interest knowing if a woman has had an abortion.
Unfortunately, there are many people who disagree with you on this.
And what would knowing do for you? Your neighbor, instead of hiding the fact that he has weapons like criminals do, follows the law and registers his legally obtained weapons. This information is already available to see. What people are mad about is when some asshat decides to conveniently collect all of this information so that only criminals have a use for it. Oh, criminals and idiots who think law-abiding citizens should be ostracized or treated differently because they are exercising their rights and acting in a responsible manner.
If my neighbor carries loaded guns around I want to know about it.
And I want a pony. The issue is if you have the right to know. He has the constitutional right to those weapons. We may not (yet) have constitutional rights to privacy, but your wanting to know doesn't mean you have to know. Besides, if he has a concealed carry permit, the whole point is that you don't know.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Thus speaks someone who thinks with his guts and not his brain.
When did all sex offenders become pedophiles? Most of them are not.
When did all pedophiles become criminals? Most of them never commit any crimes. You don't commit rapes because you are sexually attracted to women (or men), do you?
Do you know the recidivism rate for child molestation compared to other crimes? Like, for instance, gun crime?
Did you know that when you are willing to deny some people their rights, you also say that it's okay to deny you your rights when you disgust enough people?
All violent/abusive crimes are bad, whether they're sexual or not. But people are capable of changing for the better, which is why we do not give them life in prison, and consider their debt to society paid when they have served their sentence. In civilized societies, at least.
Hell, why not publish data on who has large coin collections at home while we're at it. This is yet another example why people shouldn't register their weapons with the government.
You can only have pacifism, because someone else has a gun. That gun is not necessarily the shotgun I use for squirrel hunting on Saturdays. It is the gun that the Marine carries every day in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Germany, or the Azores, or anywhere else our troops have gone, and died to. Peace is a great thing to wish for, but someone else has to be put in harm's way for you to acheive it. Had it not been for guns, the world would be a much different place right now. We would still be honoring Queen Elizabeth as our monarch. It's even possible that some of us would still be the property of the rich people.
You may not like guns, and that's fine. But don't forget all the good that people wielding guns have done in the world. And don't forget all the evil that men wielding guns have done in this world either.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Right back at ya! Knowing who has had an abortion would enable me to know who not to trade with, who not to vote for, and where not to live.
I can vote with my feet and with my wallet, and my votes go for life.
We are not denying them their rights, when they commit a crime and break the law, they are voluntarily giving up their rights.
What rights, and for how long? There's a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment in the Bill of Rights for a reason; the punishment must fit the crime. In the case of sex crimes, the lifelong punishment that comes after all jail time has been served, fines paid, etc. is almost always excessive.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If my neighbor carries loaded guns around I want to know about it.
And I want a pony. The issue is if you have the right to know. He has the constitutional right to those weapons. We may not (yet) have constitutional rights to privacy, but your wanting to know doesn't mean you have to know. Besides, if he has a concealed carry permit, the whole point is that you don't know.
Apparently not. They're from publicly available records. If it's in the public interest to keep those records private, they're going to have to change the law to make it so.
Any category of outing where the information is only available because of the nanny state in the first place.
There isn't a database of permit holders because some marketing person decided to figure out who they can best sell gun range memberships to. There's a database because the government--you know, the same nanny state you're talking about--forcibly collected the information in the first place under threat of jail. If the government collects the information against people's will, it's not "nanny state" to prevent them from doing even more harm by releasing it. Anyone who really objects to a nanny state wouldn't want the government collecting the information to begin with, and if they didn't collect the information, nobody would be able to out anyone using it.
Anarchist gun nut? I don't get it. Oh - you're just name calling, because you don't have an argument of any type to offer. I get it now. Cool, I guess, 'cause it means I win.
Let's analyze that name though. Anarchist? Hardly. I'm more of an authoritarian, than I am an anarchist. I'm more of a socialist than an anarchist too, as far as that goes. I LIKE the idea of government. I like the idea of government controlling nutcases, criminals, illegal aliens, and more. What I DO NOT LIKE, is the government infringing on the lives of law abiding citizens.
Gun nut? Maybe we need to define "gun nut". To me, a gun is a tool. Like any other tool, it has limited uses. You don't use a hammer to clean windows, you don't use a gun to clean windows, you don't use a screwdriver to clean windows - all of these tools would cause more destruction than a window cleaner can tolerate. I'm not a gun nut, or a hammer nut, or a screwdriver nut. I use each tool for it's intended purpose.
I guess I could return the favor, and call you an anti-gun-nut. I'll refrain though, and just point out that you are naive and uninformed.
"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
We're not talking about the broader scale of one nation attacking another nation here. We're talking about neighborhoods. At the neighborhood level, safe communities very rarely meet aggressive, violent people. Therefore, people living in safe communities rarely feel the need to own firearms for personal protection.
If I were buying a house, I would see high gun ownership in a neighborhood as a very bad sign, because it means that a large percentage of the people live in constant fear for their lives. It is an indicator of insufficient police protection, gang activity, drug activity, or other serious problems. It is not the only indicator (bars on windows are another good one), but it is a good indicator.
But even if that correlation did not exist, a high number of gun owners would still be a red flag. There's a reason we create police forces and military forces. They represent an elite group of people with the proper training and psychological stability to use firearms for the public good. They are actively monitored for psychological problems, they are trained to distinguish friend from foe, and they are trained to store their service weapons properly.
By contrast, out of those registered gun owners, assuming they represent a random sampling of the population, 26.2% will "suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year." (Source: NIH) Most of them lack any formal training. And their weapons are probably stored in their bedside tables, fully loaded, just waiting to be stolen and used by someone who didn't pass a background check.
So yeah, there's a very real public interest to having that information. That said, I don't agree with the GP that it should be used when deciding who to buy from or other such nonsense. The individual data points are uninteresting (except when you meet someone, conclude that he or she is nuts, and then find out that he or she owns a firearm). It is mostly in aggregate that the information is relevant.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
A dog is way more effective than a gun for keeping the home secure.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.