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Response to Roanoke (VA) Times printing name of CCW permittees
An email from VCDL:
"The RT's reckless actions have endangered lives, as there are people on that CHP list who are under threat from violent ex-spouses or from criminals they have helped put in jail.
I have been returning calls from concerned gun owners and the stories are heartbreaking and intense. One woman's mother wakens at the slightest sound in the middle of the night and she calls the police and her daughter. She is living in constant fear that the person who has threatened to kill her has now found her address complements of the Roanoke Times.
Some people are looking at moving immediately.
Fortunately, your combined efforts shutdown the database within one day, hopefully before too many bad guys had a chance to use it.
I called the Fredericksburg Freelance-Press and the King George Journal-Press on Friday. Both papers are still printing the names and other information on local CHP holders.
I explained the seriousness of what they are doing. I said that there is nothing to be gained by printing permit holder information, but a lot to be lost."
Reading the local paper down here there's not any kind of contrite tone, or regret for the article. The paper has no idea, or doesn't care, why it's such a bad idea to publish the names of CHL holders.
When I get back to Pennsylvania, I'm going to talk to a few local sheriff's and see what the situation is in our state with regard to this kind of crap. The good thing about PA is that the licensees are held at the county level, and to get every single license holder in the state (which would be about 600-700 thousand people) they'd have to call around to all 67 county sheriffs, most of which I would think would be reluctant to release that kind of information to a reporter.