The Scoop

The Journal News in suburban New York recently published a story about handgun permit records, reporting that “police have lost track of thousands of registered handguns because there’s no system in place to keep tabs on the weapons of state pistol permit holders who die.” The paper requested an electronic copy of state pistol records from state police, but they were unable to provide the data in anything but paper form; county clerks have the records, but in some they are kept on index cards. So the paper posted spreadsheets containing permit holder information for Westchester and Rockland counties, which it obtained from the county clerks. Queue outrage.

The paper reported Sunday that “dozens of readers have taken issue with The Journal News over its decision to run a list of pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties as part of a wider investigative article.” The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association went further: it posted a list of “what it thought were home addresses and telephone numbers of newspaper staff members. The list inadvertently included addresses of people not associated with the newspaper or the articles.” That list was removed from the group’s site on Friday.

Let’s be clear: these are public records, and the newspaper and public have every right to see them and even post them on the Internet. In addition, they removed street addresses, listing the permit holder’s name, city and zip code. But every media organization has to weigh the benefit of making available public records that can identify individuals versus the potential backlash. Not the backlash against the paper itself – the state gun association’s Scientology-esque tactics are annoying but not the real issue. More meaningful for everyone is the backlash against public records laws, which in this case probably will be forthcoming on a local or even state level. Also, from my reading of the initial story, it’s hard to see how posting the records really improved the reporting. The paper’s conclusions about oversight were evident without posting the records.