A newspaper exposes the addresses of its local gun owners

This country has gone gun crazy! Gun owners ran to the store to buy assault weapons because they were "afraid" they would stop selling them. Did that makes sense? Why would anyone want one so badly that it didn't matter what it was designed for and how it has been used way too many times? Then the NRA pushes for teachers to take guns to school? They think more guns is the answer but didn't say much about people shopping at a mall, going to a movie and responding to put out a fire. Well, no I have to take that back since they also thought the answer for those murders was more guns too. Since when was it mandatory to have to have a gun to be a teacher or administrator?

On the flip side we have a newspaper treating legal gun owners like criminals when the names and addresses of gun owners was published and taken from the county clerk's office. In other words, the legal gun owners were outed but they didn't do a damn thing about illegal gun owners. Since when is it a crime to own a gun?

Like I keep pointing out, I know a lot of gun owners and feel safe with them because they know how to use them and respect them. That is the way most gun owners are. Now legal gun owners are being treated like criminals? This is bad all the way around.

Even this bleeding-heart liberal believes gun owners have a right to privacy
A newspaper exposes the addresses of its local gun owners — which violates our rights as much as shoddy gun laws
BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS
Salon.com
DEC 28, 2012

In the two weeks since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, much has been written and said about our national obsession with guns – and what do about it. But a suburban New York newspaper’s unorthodox take on the issue has created a brand-new controversy over guns, rights and privacy.

Earlier this week, the White Plains Journal News ran a story with the provocative title “The Gun Owner Next Door: What You Don’t Know About the Weapons in Your Neighborhood.” The story, written by Dwight R. Worley, made few bones about its slant, opening with the chilling details of the shooting murder of a Katona woman last spring.

But it wasn’t the story that raised eyebrows. It was the revelation that after a Freedom of Information request, “Westchester provided the names and addresses of the county’s 16,616 active permit holders” to the paper. And, even worse, its online version featured an interactive map of all the “pistol permits registered with the Westchester County Clerk’s Office,” along with the invitation to “zoom in and out for more information and click on a dot to see details of a permit.” The Journal did also mention, in an editor’s note, that writer Dwight R. Worley owns a .357 Magnum. It didn’t, however, include his New York City address.

The map, thickly dotted with pins, is certainly a stunner to anyone who’s opposed to guns. And of course, inevitably, an irate blogger — and gun owner — swiftly retaliated by publishing the home addresses of the newspaper’s staff. He told CNN Thursday, “I felt they were using this to harass gun owners. So I harassed them back.” The map has also generated a deluge of polarizing responses. On Facebook, one commenter called it “disgusting, just disgusting — and you hacks should be ashamed of what you pass for ‘journalism,’” while another argued, “If someone has a right to a gun, do we not have a right to know if someone has a gun?” Well, do we? And just because a newspaper can do something, does it mean that it should?
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