Published Voting Lists (by gun ownership)...Follow

Our legislature just passed an emergency bill to ensure one of the local newspapers doesn't publish the names of licensed gun owners. Apparently New York has published such a list. Our lawmakers will be crafting a bill, though the newspaper has already done the FOIA request and legally obtained the list - so meh. Im not a registered gun owner. I'd not bother looking at a list. I kind of like the idea of the information being public record. However I see no good reason for media organizations to be obtaining and advertising such lists.

Is it wise to put a little quest circles above all the guns? It doesn't seem necessary, and seems like it could prove detrimental to our peacefulness.

Should gun registration files be public record?

Edit to add the newspaper had agreed not to publish the names before the emergency measure was passed or probably even debated on.



Edited, Feb 20th 2013 12:17am by Elinda

Gun ownership aside, I'd be pissed if someone printed a map saying "Hey, Kao officially has an expensive thingy located at this address here, maybe you should go steal it" If those lists contain the make and model of guns registered, and give potentially well armed thieves a list of high dollar targets. Especially those higher dollar collector weapons that have no intrinsic self defense value but are worth large sums of money.

I think people make a big deal about stuff like this just because guns are involved. But there is a lot of stuff that is public information that deals with matters that people sometimes assume are private. If criminals really wanted to hunt down gun owners to attack them or steal their guns, it sounds like that information is already available to them.

I can look up information on the county's website and find out exactly how much someone pays in property taxes, what properties they own, how much they are worth, whether or not they have ever been delinquent in paying them, etc. I can look up and see anything about them that has been filed with the Register of Deeds. I can do all this in moments online without ever telling the document holder who I am or why I need the information. Hell, I could be someone living in California and look up that information.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vehicle Registration information was similarly available from your DMV or Secretary of State offices/websites.

Edited, Feb 20th 2013 6:55am by TirithRR

As do cookie jars.

Oh my god second amendment!

They couldn't access it before? That's somewhat unsettling.

While I'm sure some people did, I don't understand why. It's not like this was any different than regular phone books where you could look up people's names and get their addresses and phone numbers. You know, like have been around for nearly a century.

The issue with releasing names and addresses of registered gun owners is partly the privacy angle (why do other people need to know this at all?), but also frankly the implication inherent in doing it in the first place. Quick! Name one other registry of people who've engaged in a specific past behavior that you can look up on some kind of map on the internet.

That's why people are a bit peeved about this. There's tons of information out there that is technically public, but that no one bothers to file for and accumulate into a list and present said list on an online map correlating names/addresses to that information. It's a lot of time and expense, and for what? So that everyone can look up which of their neighbors have been divorced? Or which have criminal records? Or what education they have? Or how many dependents? Or anything else?

The decision to spend the time/money doing so in this case and with this specific bit of information creates an impression that tracing such information is somehow important to the public at large (despite there never having been any sort of call by the public to do so). Which I would imagine was exactly the point if doing it. Which gets us back to why people are upset about this.




Yes. The point is to make law abiding citizens appear to be like criminals. And not just any criminals, but some kind of social pariah level criminal. I'm hoping no one missed that, but I'll say it just in case.

Ease of access mostly I recall. Google a phone number, get an address, enter into mapquest. It takes all of 30 seconds, compared to time it would normally take for acommon person to track down that information back in the 80s or something. Mostly silly in retrospect of course.



Add a like button and you have a multi-billion dollar company.



Or hopefully, and this is where my money is, people will realize that normal people everywhere own guns and there's no reason to get all in a tizzy about it. Public data is public data, if it's out there you have to realize people are going to see it. You put your name in the phone book and...

Actually, it was a lot easier to track someone down back then than it is right now. You picked up a phone book and looked for the name of the person, and got a list of names and addresses. If you already knew one of the other bits of information, you got the third. It took all of 10 seconds. Today, lots of people just have cell phones, so they aren't in local phone books. Online books are sketchy at best, and again aren't as likely to have complete information. If you want to not show up on those kinds of searches, it's not terribly difficult to do so.




Difference is that the right to keep and bear arms is a specifically enumerated right in the constitution. We should be alarmed at anything that might infringe it.

You'll have to explain to me again how this infringes on the right to own and shoot a gun. I don't remember anywhere in the constitution there being a right to own a gun secretly.

Oh well, in the end publicity stunt is a publicity stunt or something.

Edited, Feb 20th 2013 1:47pm by someproteinguy

The polar bears are coming, and they're pissed.

Natasha, is that you?


Edit: Someone isn't a Rocky and Bullwinkle fan...

Edited, Feb 21st 2013 9:18am by Shaowstrike