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Washpost blog: "Your Neighbor's Gun" (Trejbal story)
Rabid anti-gun-owner ("Total ban makes sense to me") and post columnist Marc Fisher has a blog on the Roanoke/Trejbal fiasco with VA CCW holders being outed.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/03/know_your_neighbors_who_has_a.html
Of course, his blog allows comments, and many seem to be going Fisher's way . . .
Rabid anti-gun-owner ("Total ban makes sense to me") and post columnist Marc Fisher has a blog on the Roanoke/Trejbal fiasco with VA CCW holders being outed.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/03/know_your_neighbors_who_has_a.html
Know Your Neighbors: Who Has A Gun Permit?
Roanoke Times editorial writer Christian Trejbal last week decided to celebrate Sunshine Week in Virginia by providing readers of his newspaper with the complete list of all their neighbors who hold permits to carry concealed weapons. Now there's a real public service; if your neighbor is prepared to shoot someone who attempts, say, to mug him, you'd certainly want to know about it.
Well, the ensuing howling was almost as big a riot as if Trejbal had tried to confiscate those guns himself. Readers went ballistic, so to speak. Folks threatened to cancel their subscriptions, demanded that the editorial writer be sacked, jumped up and down until the paper caved in entirely and stripped the database from its web site. (The paper fell back on the lame excuse that some of the names in its database should not have been there because those folks got their permits to carry as a result of having been victims of violent crimes; the reasoning is that such people have an extra special right and cause to carry concealed weapons and their names ought not be made public.)
Even that was not craven enough a response for the offended masses. Now there's a move to change Virginia law so that the public records showing who holds a permit to carry become un-public. So much for Sunshine Week.
Trejbal made no effort in his original piece to criticize the carrying concealed weapons law or permitting process. He simply did what any citizen can and should do--take existing public records and make them easily accessible. Just as newspapers like the Post have taken real estate records and put them on our web site so that readers don't have to troop down to the courthouse to check on the assessed value of the houses on their block, the Roanoke paper took an existing public database and made it readily available to the public. Nothing Trejbal did in any way changed the public nature of the list of gun permit holders; he simply removed an obstacle to easy checking of the list.
Trejbal knew from the start that some folks would not like their neighbors to know what they are carrying around with them. Maybe deep down, those people with carrying permits know that having that permit renders them dangerous and odd to many of their fellow citizens. Trejbal wrote at the very top of his first piece on the subject:
I can hear the shocked indignation of gun-toters already: It's nobody's business but mine if I want to pack heat.
Au contraire. Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone's business.
The reaction was swift and wild. The very first commenter on the Times' site posted Trejbal's home address. So there! Trejbal calmly debated his readers, arguing that he was not making any comment on the gun law, just on the public information law and the need for citizens to lay claim to those sunshine rights.
The editorial writer did look into the impact that concealed carry laws have on crime rates. Checking FBI records, he found that overall violent crime rates are slightly lower in concealed carry states, but in some especially awful crime categories, rates are much higher in concealed carry states--for example, rape, aggravated assault, property crimes, burglarly and theft. But Trejbal didn't include any of that in his original piece because he was not aiming to criticize Virginia's gun law; rather, he only sought to celebrate the public information law.
Trejbal discovered that about 2 percent of Virginians hold concealed weapon permits. By listing all of those who lived in his paper's area, he allowed readers to make their own choices--some might feel safer knowing that the guy next door carries, while others might decide to ban their children from playing in a house where the parents are packing. Information is not the enemy--information is a tool. You can use it to argue your case, defend your rights, push for change or merely check up on the neighbor. (I'm waiting for publication of a database of who owns dogs that bark every morning at dawn--that way I won't ever again make the same mistake I made a few years ago, when I moved out of one house thrilled to get away from a nuisance dog, only to land at another location where a dog sometimes serves as our early morning alarm.)
It's terrific to see a newspaper serving its community by making public databases more open and available. I was disheartened to see the Roanoke paper back off so quickly. As the Internet has taught a new generation of readers, information wants to be free. That doesn't necessarily mean free of charge (Trejbal had to pay a fee to get the gun permit database and the Roanoke paper has to pay Trejbal's salary and the cost of putting the database on its web site), but it does mean freely and broadly available to all.
Of course, his blog allows comments, and many seem to be going Fisher's way . . .
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