Ethical? Interactive map of gun permit holders

I would like to know which of my neighbors is a registered Democrat. Can't be too careful.

 

It depends really.....if what the blogger published is all from phone books or public records, then its fair game in the same way the permits and addresses are all public record.

My question is how easy is to for the average Joe to look up their own address and see what gun permits are issued around them? Was there a lot of leg work? Did they have to FOIA it? Or was most of the work just making the map?

 

My guess, which is only partially educated from a few years doing claims investigations, is that gun permits are as public as voter registration rolls or professional licenses (doctors, etc.) that you have to register with the state in question. They all, for example, show up on a Lexis-Nexis report and will give you an address (sometimes an old address, but an address that someone lived in at one time). With some work, you could totally make your Map of Democrats (or Republicans, or Greens, or whatever).

Which makes me curious about the methodology used in putting this map together since even a fresh credit report (not public information), will sometimes just give you a bunch of old addresses and be spottier on current stuff (it's just been "a matter of record" for less time, so you're less connected with it). If these are just names the local government has on the rolls, have they been cleaned out lately? Have some of these people moved? Are these addresses now occupied by entirely new people who may or may not be gun owners? You can sift and double-check to try and clean data like this up yourself, but it takes a lot of time that part of me doubts a daily newsroom devoted to it.

 

Go farther. Do any newspaper staffers owe back taxes? Are all their vehicles properly registered? To which candidates do they donate? Any registered sex offenders? The people, after all, need to know.

 

Bravo for the blogger firing back with newspaper staffers' info. Two can play at that game.

Publishing the original data was simply an attempt to ostracize and bring criticism down on citizens exercising their legal rights. And yes, it might have endangered the non-gun owners because the bad guys know which houses are safer to hit now. If I'm a bad guy and there's a few gun owners in any group of people, I'm better off if I know which specific ones are the owners.

How 'bout we publish the names of all the single parents who are letting their boys be raised by TV and video games when they should be getting traditional, committed parenting? That might be as big a factor in these troubled males going off as access to guns.

 

In other words, provide the context that the newspaper didn't provide.

 

The lack of context is just one thing that made this a bad idea.

Another problem: this looks uncomfortably like the databases of registered sex offenders.

As for the blogger: I'm not a big believer in the "proper retaliation" school of thought. "Look, I'm as big an asshole as you are!"

 

The idea is that the employees will revolt and pressure the large company into feeling bad about publishing the list.

Obviously, they don't know Gannett.

 

I think the information of registry records is important information, but I agree with those who say it's pointless to print every name. It's also of little value without context. A better use of the info: How does a map of gun ownership look against a map detailing crime rates in an area? Is there a correlation?

 

Chicago: Strictest anti-gun laws in the nation.
Chicago: Highest number of shootings and gun homicides in the nation.
Year in, year out.

Someone seems to be ignoring, or not enforcing, those strict laws.

 

The Editor's Note points out that the author, who loves in Queens, has had a gun permit since 2011.

It's very hard to get a gun permit in New York City. I'd be curious to know how he got one, and it would have been nice if they had told us.

 

Terrible decision.

One paper I once worked at published the address of two registered sex offenders. About a week later, someone went to their houses and killed them.

There is no reason this stuff should even be public information. Certainly no reason for a newspaper or other media outlet to publish it. Terrible.