I was busy during the fuss over the Journal News publishing (and eventually unpublishing) a map of gun permit holders in its coverage area.
Other than a few comments on social media, I didn’t join the discussion. While I thought some criticism was valid, I was troubled by the outcry among journalists. At several points, I wanted to weigh in, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what I wanted to say. So I kept mostly silent and kept my focus on the work I needed to do.
Geneva Overholser (a colleague from our first hitches at the Des Moines Register back in the 1980s) has said what I wanted to say. Whether you agree or disagree with the publication of the gun permit data, you should read Geneva’s Online Journalism Review post Secrecy is trumping public interest in gun control coverage.
From local sheriffs and gun owners intimidating publishers about concealed weapon permits that are and should be public records to an increasingly opaque White House, momentum is shifting away from openness. Journalists and citizens should worry about that shift, however you feel about a particular issue.
We need to make the case for openness better than we have. I’m glad Geneva made the case well, and I’m sorry that I didn’t.
And I leave a comment (which are evidently moderated) on her post. She characterizes the gun-permit database incorrectly, as do many who are crusading on both sides of the discussion, and it drives me crazy. This is gun PERMIT data, not gun-ownership data. It really doesn’t tell you one new thing about which houses contain guns, a point that permit-owners have used to push for privacy. It’s like equating people with driver’s licenses to people who own cars. I would suggest she should find a different example to make her (very good) point.
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I disagree, Elaine. Her larger points are about secrecy and public records, not any particular type of record. Gun permits absolutely are a matter of public interest. And I cannot imagine that they don’t correlate pretty closely to gun ownership. Where they would be off would be much more a matter of people owning guns illegally than with people getting a gun permit and then not following through on the purchase. That’s a red herring and the analogy to driver’s licences and auto ownership makes no sense. Both of those are and should be public record. If you’re publishing gun permit records (or concealed-weapons permits), you should say what they are and what they’re not, but the potential for confusion is not a valid argument for keeping any records secret.
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