When gun owners refuse to monitor their own...

Heck, take it a step further. In the US certain races and ethnicities are more likely to commit crimes than others (we can have a whole discussion on the historical and socio-economic reasons for this, that's not the point). Could you imagine if a newspaper thought it had an obligation to warn potential homebuyers which streets had members of these races and ethnicities living in them?

Why the hell would you want to register a gun? The only possible reason for registering is so they can confiscate.

So I've been thinking. The Left wants to ban guns. Sure, they'll lie and say they only want "responsible firearms regulation." Well, responsible firearms regulation would relax existing gun laws in many localities, and that's not what they're pushing for, so that puts the lie to "responsible firearms regulation" being what they want. They want to ban guns.

Now, when it comes to marijuana prohibition, they seem to realize that that doesn't work. Drug and human smuggling from Mexico into the U.S. is well known. And they want to add gun smuggling to that? They want to put something into effect that not only won't work but will see career criminals who are known to resort to violence travel with truckloads full of weapons and ammunition? And think about this, too -- at the point where semiautomatic firearms become something the cartels traffic in, that new black market isn't going to restrict itself to semiautomatic firearms. They're going to bring us ALL the goodies we want, because if everything that's suitable for defense of oneself and one's loved ones is illegal, everything is on the illegally available table.

Hey! Maybe we'll get all those assault rifles that Obama walked into Mexico back!

Oh, fuck that shit.

If you don't want a gun in your home, that is your right, but what I have in my home is none of your damned business.

When the negatives outweigh the positives, you really shouldn't be doing it, no matter how good those positives are.

Good, now post your address and phone number for us to see.

None of my business to control sure, but it would help me make an informed decision of whether or not I should move into your trailer park.

Baaaaaaa. Baaaaaaa.

The U.S. is the most violent core economy in terms of gun related deaths.

How do we rate if we excluded gun violence?

Next up from the newspapers: Lists of...

People who own American Staffordshire Terriors
People who are members of Alcoholics Anonymous
People who have ever had a speeding ticket
People who have ever had a parking ticket
People who own hummers
People who've gotten divorced
People whose children have been given detention

After all, Chad doesn't wanna move into a neighborhood with pit bulls, drunks who drive large vehicles too fast and park them badly, and misbehaving children from broken families!

Oh, and also:
People who've recently bought large screen TVs
People known to have lots of jewelry
The income of each and every household
People with nice art collections
The combinations to everyone's safes...

Burglars can cross-reference all this with who doesn't have guns so they can decide which houses to rob.

Some of these are actually done: Some small-town papers publish lists of speeding citations, albeit in agate form. The driver's ed instructor in the town of 9,000 where I used to live loved it. Marriages and divorces are often published as well, as are property transfers. (Detentions are different, since school discipline records are private under FERPA.)

But all of these are done as a routine matter of course, without the "these people are doing something shameful, and the public needs to know!" tone that comes across when you make an online database and write a big ol' story about it.

You realize there is a difference between items that are part of public record (gun registration, tickets, and drunk drivers) and those that are not (everything else you mentioned)? I wouldn't demand that any of what you mentioned be made available if it wasn't already available and part of public record. A lot of it is readily available, though. Hell, with the internet you can find out if someone has a DUI, a criminal history, or is a sex offender.

You don't have to register your dog where you live?

Hell, in N.C. not only do you register them, you pay a tax on them.

I wouldn't know.

This thread confuses me.

The title says something about police.

I'm just a gun owner with a CCWP. No police officer here. :|

No it doesn't, read the thread title again.

You were talking about it as if you did.

Good luck with that.

No, I was merely throwing out quick examples of what is in the public record, and three seemed sufficient. Perhaps the inclusion of an et cetera at the end would have satisfied you? I'm sure I left out plenty of things that are part of public record, but my point still stands: There is a difference between what is part of public record and what is not part of public record. Is there not?

The thing is that you, by your own admission, didn't know what the hell you were talking about.

Sure. It just seems to me that this particular case is pretty much a hit piece against every gun owner in the state of New York. I'm guessing you see it differently than I do.

William Spengler's note detailed source of guns; arrests imminent, sources say

You're focusing on the omission of dog registration in my parenthetical note, twisting my words around, ignoring the context of my entire post, and bringing the conversation further away from the point of this thread. I'm hoping it's just a matter of mixed communication between us, and not a deliberate attempt to shift the topic of this thread towards dogs. Because I am rather neutral on the topic of dogs.

Yes, and I've already stated that I find it ethically questionable that they did so. Nevertheless, the information on gun registration is already part of public record. They are simply organizing the data much like other websites do with crime statistics, property values, sex offender registries, demographic information, etc., etc. and could similarly prove helpful for home buyers to make a more informed decision when looking for homes.

I wasn't shifting it towards dogs. I was just pointing out that you were talking about something you didn't know about. When did that become taboo here, and oh by the way...how did I "twist your words"?

I'm not suggesting that they did anything illegal. I just don't think there's anything okay or "helpful" about it. There's a difference between sex offenders and gun owners.

So why not publish a database of personal bankruptcy filings and divorces too? The People Deserve To Know!

I have no objection to any of the above information, including gun permits, being subject to the Freedom of Information Act. My objection is to the newspaper's decision to do what they did with it.

Umm.......they already do, at least in the news papers in my town.
But a criminal can't steal (or get shot by) a divorce or bankruptcy.

They publish the listings, probably in 8-point type on page B14, but did they make an online database showing everyone by address and then write a big story saying "here, come see which of your neighbors are divorced and broke"?