Posting The Addresses of Gun Permit Holders Was SHEER IDIOCY.

Posting the names and Google maps locations of gun permit holders is an exercise of sheer stupidity.

I totally denounce this behavior, which came to light while I was out on Christmas break with my family, and I'll give just a few reasons why I denounce it.

• It enables criminals to try and steal these guns when they think the owners are away. Many gun crimes are committed by stolen guns.
• Not all gun owners are Conservative, case in point being Yours Truly. Even fewer are ever going to become violent criminals. This, thus, becomes an attack on innocent bystanders.
• And all of this means that this move was both vindictive and unproductive - a horrible combination. 

Newspaper Posts Gun Owners' Names

A newspaper in New York has received a wave of criticism from its readers after publishing the names and addresses of all of the individuals with handgun or pistol permits in its coverage area.

Hundreds of residents in New York's Westchester and Rockland counties were surprised to findtheir names and addresses listed on a map posted by The Journal News on Sunday. Users can click any dot on the map to see which of their neighbors has a permit for a gun.

The map sparked more than 500 comments from readers within a day of its appearance on the website, many of them voicing outrage at the paper's decision to make the information public.

"This is CRAZY!! why in the world would you post every licensed gun owner information?? What do you hope to accomplish by doing this. This is the type of thing you do for sex offenders not law abiding gun owners. What next? should i hang a flag outside my house that says I own a gun? I am canceling my subscription with your paper today!!!" said commenter Curtis Maenza.

Oh, and did I mention that this idiot move by the Journal News was liable to backfire in their face? (Nope, because I actually didn't see this one coming.) Well, it turns out that it did backfire in their faces. The posting of the names and locations of gun permit holders has led to gun owners retaliating in kind: now the journalists who work at that company have been similarly exposed. Whether they were involved in the company's brain dead move or not.

Journalists’ Addresses Posted In Revenge For Newspaper’s Google Map Of Gun Permit Owners

A week after the Newtown massacre, The Journal News published an interactive Google Map with the names and addresses of gun permit owners in select New York cities. The bold move has escalatedinto a transparency arms race, after a Connecticut lawyer posted the phone number and addresses of the Journal‘s staff, including a Google Maps satellite Image of the Publisher’s home. “I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask,” read Christopher Fountain’s blog post. The double irony here is that open data was heralded as a tool of enlightened civic dialog, and has been co-opted for fierce partisanship, bordering on public endangerment.

Idiocy has begat idiocy.