The article includes an interactive map of Westchester and Rockland counties that allows readers to view those who have a license to own handguns around them.
The article also has an editor's note attached to it describing the type of gun the journalist who wrote the article owns. "Journal News reporter Dwight R. Worley owns a Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum and has had a residence permit in New York City for that weapon since February 2011," it states.
Some critics felt the Journal News article put people in danger. "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," one commenter wrote on the newspaper's website. Others worried that the names would expose law enforcement officials. "You have judges, policemen, retired policemen, FBI agents — they have permits. Once you allow the public to see where they live, that puts them in harm’s way," Paul Piperato, the Rockland county clerk, told Journal News reporter Worley.
ABC News reached out to the Journal News for a statement. The paper told ABC that its readers "are understandably interested to know about guns in their neighborhoods," after the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn.
The Journal News is owned by Gannett.
This crap is just irresponsible. It gives burglars in search of firearms for the criminal black-market a virtual shopping list. It publishes a list of law-enforcement and judicial members-since these are the only people who qualify for the guns in this jurisdiction. It lets the children in the family a scavenger-finder list with which to go look for the guns. It may intimidate some into getting rid of their guns but probably not. If it does, they will undoubtdly go the gun-show or private sales route--perfectly legal. But if the objective is to get rid of guns, it merely spreads them around. Idiots.
This makes the case further for not having any gun registry. There is no national gun registry because legislatures have resisted it largely for these kids of abuses.
Idiots.
Now if this was here in the South or in any other area where gun ownership is regarded as normal,it would be far easier and take up far less space for them to print a list of those who do NOT own guns--thereby further placing the non-gun-owners at risk of home-invasion; I mean, why not--the bad guys know there will be no armed resistance. Idiots.