This has happened before. You think criminals read the news?
Anti-gunners lament the Patriot Act, but don’t even blink when gun owners’ PII is put out in the ether. But it just may backfire. It is very interesting that the LA Times would run this story.
Using the information published by the Commercial Appeal, they found burglaries in 2009 declined 18% in the city’s ZIP codes with the most concealed-carry permits and generally increased in ZIP codes with the fewest.
Read today that a New York attorney, incensed by the newspaper publishing this information, published the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all the newspaper staff, including a photo of the publisher’s home, on his blog.
The attorney also made the point that some of the handgun permit holders were women who had been victims of domestic abuse and undoubtedly thrilled to see their names and addresses made available online.
When I was a paramedic a long time ago, I had many patients that were adult and pediatric victims of domestic violence. Restraining orders, counseling, all sorts of stuff was tried. They usually failed.
Honestly, the only thing that really made it stop was the victim getting the hell away, and getting a gun. Something about a loaded .357 tended to make the abuser reconsider their plan of action.
If I was the subject of violence, and those “journalists” published my info, I’d be all over them like ugly on an ape. In Texas, we have a law that prohibits release of CHL info, for precisely that reason.
Yeah, I had read about the journalists’ info being published today too. This whole anti-gunner movement has hypocrisy graffiti all over it. Trying to prevent another 9-11 and it’s invasion of privacy. Release people’s gun info and it’s “in the interest of safety.”
But it’s also absolutely unconscionable the risk in which they are putting the armed and unarmed folks, but especially the previous victims of violence.
SeriousStudent, I did my thesis at a fine Texas school regarding the relationship between the number of CHLs in Texas and the number of violent crimes in Texas each year per Table 5 of the FBI’s annual crime report. During my research I came across the change in law regarding the release of CHL info. Once upon a time, that wasn’t illegal. They quickly rectified that when it started getting abused by the Violence Policy Center. But as you know, the number of CHLs has been going up, and the number of violent crimes has been going down. Going back an equal number of years pre-CHL as post-CHL (28 years of violent crime data), there was a statistically significant relationship between the two.
I also saw that the list they published has some 8k retired or active LE listed. I am sure they will be happy to see their name and address listed for guys they have sent to prison to look up.