TELL US: Should Licensed Gun Owners' Information be Public?
If you are licensed to own a gun, would you want your name and address publicized?
A news publication in New York is under scrutiny for publishing the names and addresses of gun owners in certain parts of the state. Less than two weeks after the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn., the New York Journal News earlier this week published the names and addresses of local gun owners in three New York counties. A story titled, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood," highlights the names and addresses of residents who are licensed to own handguns through Freedom of Information Law requests, according to The Huffington Post. The Journal News reportedly requested the information from New York's Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, though the publication was only able to …
Jay Down South in Dixie
10:19 am on Friday, December 28, 2012
One, if the information is not protected by the state's privacy laws, then publication of the information is not an invasion of privacy. The question is whether the information, private or not, about otherwise law abiding citizens was sufficiently "newsworthy" to publish. If the point was simply to dramatize how many people in a community own guns, statistics would suffice. Obviously, that was … more ›