New York Newspaper to List More Gun Permit Holders after Uproar
New York newspaper to list more gun permit holders after uproar
Some 44,000 people are licensed to own pistols in the three counties, the newspaper said. Owners of rifles and shotguns do not need permits, the newspaper said.
Republican state Senator Greg Ball of Patterson, New York, said he planned to introduce legislation to keep permit information private except to prosecutors and police."Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves?" Rob Seubert of Silver Spring, Maryland, posted on the newspaper's web site. "What a bunch of liberal boobs you all are."
A similar bill that he introduced earlier as an Assemblyman failed in the state Assembly.
"The asinine editors at the Journal News have once again gone out of their way to place a virtual scarlet letter on law abiding firearm owners throughout the region," Ball wrote on his Senate web site.The newspaper's editor and vice president of news, CynDee Royle, earlier in the week defended the decision to list the permit holders.
"We knew publication of the database would be controversial, but we felt sharing as much information as we could about gun ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings," she said.
Some critics retaliated by posting reporters' and editors' addresses and other personal information online.
Howard Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, called the critics' response childish and petulant.
"It doesn't move the issue of gun control to the level of intelligent public discussion," he said. "Instead, it transforms what should be a rational public debate on a contentious issue into ugly gutter fighting."Good said the information about permit holders was public and, if presented in context, served a legitimate interest.
"If journalists could show flaws in the gun permitting system, that would be newsworthy," he said. "Or, for example, if gun owners were exempted from permits because of political connections, then journalists could better justify the privacy invasion."
"The net effect of the abuse of public records from all sides may well be a public distaste for opening records, which would be the biggest mistake of all," he said.