Last week a newspaper in New York created a huge uproar when it published a list of registered gun owners in a two county area. The information was legally obtained through a Freedom of Information request and now another county is being added to the list.
Further names and addresses will be added as they become available to a map originally published on December 24 in the White Plains, New York-based Journal News, the newspaper said.
The original map listed thousands of pistol permit holders in suburban Westchester and Rockland counties just north of New York City.
Along with an article entitled “The gun owner next door: What you don’t know about the weapons in your neighborhood,” the map was compiled in response to the December 14 shooting deaths of 26 children and adults in Newtown, Connecticut, editors of the Gannett Corp.-owned newspaper said.
The next batch of names will be permit holders in suburban Putnam County, New York, where the county clerk told the newspaper it is still compiling information.
Of course the right is still going bat shit crazy over this, declaring it a “violation of rights”, despite the fact that information is 100% legally obtained and not protected under any privacy clause.
But I got thinking, then I got into doing some Googling. Here’s something I found:
12/19/2012 – Dalton Williams Killed: South Dakota Teen Fatally Shot By Friend Over Paintball Game
12/12/12 – Boy shoots dead friend, 12, with his grandfather’s gun while playing after school at his home
That’s 2 incidents I found in about 30 seconds of Google that involved a child shooting another child using a family member’s weapon that was unsecured in the home.
Now let’s stop and think about that list up above. We already know children shooting children is something that happens way too often, so wouldn’t it be nice if we had a way to prevent some of those? Well maybe we do. A list like that would let parents know who has a gun and if they have children that are playmates, then they can inquire as to the security of these weapons.
So perhaps a publicly accessible database of registered gun owners is something that is needed. Sure there will be those parents who don’t register their weapons, but if only one child’s life is saved by this, then it is well worth it.