NY Newspaper Draws Flak for Putting Gun Owners on MapWednesday, 26 Dec 2012 10:24 AM By Michael Mullins [What this article also does is draw the attention of "some" to the population that does NOT have guns. Which houses are exposed!]
A suburban New York City newspaper published an interactive map
showing the addresses of thousands of local residents with
handgun permits and has drawn flak from gun owners, some of whom
expressed their anger via the newspaper's Facebook page.
The Monday article in The Journal News was headlined "The gun
owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your
neighborhood," and was in response to the Dec. 14 school
shooting in Newtown, Conn.
"Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to
use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect
themselves? What a bunch of liberal boobs you all are," wrote
one reader.
The sentiments were echoed by another, who wrote, "How dare you
guys. You have just destroyed the privacy of these law-abiding
citizens and by releasing this list, you have equated them to
that of sex offenders and murders. These are law-abiding gun
owners, they are no danger to anyone except for criminals. And
with this information you have made them targets for both
criminals and anti-gun lobbyist who I am sure are going to treat
them like monsters. I hope you are sued for infringing on the
privacy rights of every single one of these citizens you have
just put in harm's way."
One reader, in an attempt to "turn the tables on the Journal and
see how they like it," posted the home addresses of the
newspaper's president, top editors, and the reporter who wrote
the story.
The gun registration information, which is available to the
public, was obtained by The Journal News through a through a
Freedom of Information Act request.
On Tuesday, in an article written by Journal News Reporter Randi
Weiner, the paper defended its decision to post the addresses of
handgun permit holders across Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam
Counties, the northern suburbs of New York City where the paper
is read.
"We knew publication of the database would be controversial, but
we felt sharing as much information as we could about gun
ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the
Newtown shootings," Weiner quoted CynDee Royle, editor and vice
president of the newspaper. "People are concerned about who owns
guns and how many of them there are in their neighborhoods."
Royle said that a freedom of information request seeking the
specifics on how many and what types of weapons were owned by
people in the above mentioned counties was denied.
"New York residents have the right to own guns with a permit and
they also have a right to access public information," said Janet
Hasson, president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group.
According to the paper, the controversial map has been
recommended on Facebook more than 20,000 times as of Tuesday.
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