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VA newspaper prints lists of CCW permittees
It's the Roanoke Times.
"People might like to know if their neighbors carry. Parents might like to know if a member of the car pool has a pistol in the glove box. Employers might like to know if employees are bringing weapons to the office."
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Is this legal?
Even if it is public information, the newspaper should not be publishing this information. It will ruin some people's lives.
MSM: "Oh, well, we need to break a few eggs in the name of free speech and the greater good"
When the Sioux Falls, SD paper did something similar the address information for the person responsible got posted around the web - you know, in case his neighbors might want to know they were living next to someone who'd betray the public trust like that.
In the summer of 2000 an Elkhart, Indiana newspaper editor made available the entire database of handgun license holders in the state of Indiana on their website and made it searchable by address and name. Quite a few of us from our local gun rights advocates group decided we needed to take a trip to the editor's office and discuss why what he had done had put all of us at risk.
Indiana is an open carry state and most of us carried openly most of the time. So you can imagine the look on the editors face when 7 license holders walked into his office without an appointment to discuss what he had done. Apparently when we showed up his secretary had stopped out for a moment so we decided not to wait and just let ourselves into his office. We had a very good discussion and by the end of the day the database was removed and has never returned.
Sometimes letters work but for the fastest response I suggest showing up in person. It worked for us.
Mark Vanderberg
Host of the Gun Rights Advocates Podcast
gotta love it, vanderberg. and i do.
This is obviously a smarmy attempt to out CCW holders wrapped in sunshine laws. Obvious from the comment on identifying local politicians who carry so the public could avoid annoying them. But it could backfire. An enterprising criminal can or could now easily identify who to avoid. Thus the non-permit holders no longer enjoy the benefit of the criminal's doubt of who is and isn't carrying.
I see that right now the database is offline due to some legal issues.
As I see it, this is an act of terrorism.
Check out War on Guns today for a follow-up on this story.
wonder how many of us "ordinary" could count on open-ended extra police patrols because we had a package on the porch and we had just wronged several thousand people and were now scared. This would be funny as Hell if it weren't so serious.
But one's criminal record is protected.
And 98% of the people who polled oppose the schmuck. I have this nasty hope that something happens and the paper and editorialist get themselves sued.