6 days a week…you guess which.

Which night is Dancing with the Stars on?

So – where’s ‘White Plains’?

Yeah, funny how none of the magic the gun enthusiasts are constantly promising never seems to appear. How, instead of being a deterrent to crime, having a gun in your home makes it much more likely you’ll be a victim of gun violence. How, in most cases when there’s a mass shooting in progress, the bad guy with the gun is only stopped when he turns into a good guy with a gun and shoots himself dead.

But I’m sure that it will only take another 3- or 4,000 more dead innocents before something magical will happen. And that’s a small price to pay.

The only thing that would make this story better would be if the homeowner had been shot with his own gun by the burglar.

I mean, worse. It would make the story worse.

I don’t disagree with the point of the post, but I really don’t know what the newspaper was trying to achieve by publishing the interactive maps. I’ve often argued with the few NRA-type gunowners I know about why they object to registering guns (pointing out that their cars are much more essential to their daily existence). Aside from anti-government nuts, the others have only vague reservations or have no real objections. This publication seems to me to antagonize reasonable people and raise objections to gun registration, while achieving no appreciable benefits.

Actually, the real lesson here is that aggregating public information so that any moron with a mouse and dangerous motive can target people is dangerous.
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You’re ok with it in this case because the people targeted are gun owners, and in some people’s mind that automatically makes them a gun “nut”. I take it you make no distinction either.
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Note that these guns were locked away in a safe that apparently did its job. Assuming there were children in the house it appears they too were being responsibly protected.
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We’ve seen similar past public aggregations both online and over the radio. They’ve gotten doctors and health workers hurt or killed.
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So no, you’re way off base. I suspect you’d be, forgive the choice of words, up in arms if your home address, your belongings, and your belief systems were similarly aggregated and circulated in a way that any moron with a mouse and dangerous motive could target you.
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But then maybe not. Many people are remarkably tolerant of things that hurt other people when they are confident it will never affect them. Of course we call such people “sociopaths”.

Nice job missing the main point: that the threat of an armed citizen is a deterrent to those who would do evil, except when it isn’t.

But, please, carry on….

Of course the proper NRA response to this would be: the only way to protect your guns is …. buy more guns.

Needz moar full-auto 50-cals and RPG’s. You know…for home defense.

This was a burglary, not a home invasion.

Of course a gun in a safe with no owner at home can’t deter burglaries.

You know what does at least help deter a burglary? Not creating public aggregation lists where any moron with a mouse and dangerous motive can target people…

This old man was set up to be watched and robbed. You seem ok with that because he is a gun owner, and no degree of responsible ownership seems to prevent you from publicly painting him as delusional gun nut.

He was a victim of people who think they can create victims without repercussion. And those people are right. They are sociopaths and so are you when you defend them.

But please, carry on…

Yup, you’re right that this sort of “Hey, lookie here!” publication is a crappy thing to do. It’s sort of ironic that you mention that “We’ve seen similar past public aggregations both online and over the radio. They’ve gotten doctors and health workers hurt or killed.”, given that those incidents, and other “anti-liberal” attacks have almost invariably been instigated and carried out by only one side of the political spectrum – the side that shrieks and froths when the rights of legitimate gun owners are thought to be potentially under threat. It sure would be nice to see this use of personal information against “enemies” stop. You’re right that the people being “targeted” here are being put at risk in a very stupid way. It’s not right. I suspect you may have read TB’s post a little off here, though – rather than him being “OK with it”, perhaps he was merely being a bit “schadenfreudey” at the “do unto others” aspect of it. If, upon reflection, you feel that you may have been a bit unfair to TB here, perhaps you could do some penance by taking your displeasure to some other sites that have been known to actually use the technique you are angry about – you might start with that delightful young lady (and innocent victim) Michelle Malkin. I’m sure she would be only too happy to work with you on an Internet project to stop this sort of dangerous foolishness.

Your grasp of details not in evidence, particularly the one where the database was used to select the victim and how they knew the guns would be in a safe, is profound.

The burglars were a little dim, doing it on a Saturday night, when they should expect someone to be home. Most of them prefer daytime, when people are likely to be at work.

TB, I think the newspaper was off base in publishing the information, but on the other hand, it’s public. The problem might be that people don’t expect to see that kind of information made public. (I think most people don’t realize how much is public information.)

I have a couple of crazy neighbors (we all do) including a few who are known to get profoundly and dangerously drunk. Personally I’d like to know if any of them are strapped.

IF only Obama would lift his short-sided ban on Death Stars…

Public record is public record. Purchasing something legally that requires registration means that publication of that information is part of the purchase. Drivers license information is public record, taxes are public record, voting registration is public record. And it all by-Chuy should be. If you’re frightened by the fact that your name and address will be made public, then perhaps you’ll re-consider the purchase.

The article also made Bill (no, I never really objected to FISA)Keller of the NYT have a sad. Although he does make the point that the readers of the paper still wouldn’t know if their neighbor across the street had an enormous arsenal of rifles…

Second Amendment absolutists are all…ahem, up in arms over a newspaper printing public records in accordance with their First Amendment rights?

This suggests that even Second Amendment advocates realize that information is more powerful than weaponry.

Funny, ain’t it?

The whole story of that attempted burglary smells suspiciously convenient for the extended clipping crowd…

I agree that the newspaper’s move was vaguely dickish and oddly pointless, but pococurante could perhaps enlighten us and explain how exactly he’d go about outlawing the act of “aggregating public information.” A ban on spreadsheets and relational databases? Then you’re gonna have some mighty angry geeks on your hands, and while nerds with calculators don’t usually kill people, 1st amendment defenders with their extended mag quinoa and kale dinner casserole could do some real damage to your manhood…

I heard a discussion about this on the program “On the Media” on NPR yesterday, which was a reasonably decent discussion about what types of public info routinely gets published – either in print or otherwise – and which public info tends not to be published & why or why not.

The radio discussion provided good reasons why the addresses of gun owners shouldn’t have been published broadly, while acknowledging that the info is *available* should someone wish to seek it out. I’m leaning towards the side of saying the newspaper was wrong, but…

… some 2d Amend Rights-advocates appear not to deal much in irony and satire. That said, it is “interesting” to note how gun-fetishists, esp via their sycophantic, co-dependent (and much bought off) NRA mouthpiece – love to ram the notion down everyone’s throats that MOAR GUNZ will make everyone ever so much safer. And yet, when the locations of some of those said MORE GUNZ is published, suddenly we, in fact, are Not. At. All. “Safer.”

hmmm… “interesting”…

I wrote a lengthy piece about the whole gun mess at my shitty little blog, the most pertinent to the topic at hand being my experience growing up surrounded by an arsenal. The arsenal was a closely-guarded family secret; for reasons I explain I’m very glad that my dad’s name was never printed in the local paper as being a gun owner. Then again, since his stuff was more collector’s pieces and bought privately and through gun shows, I kind of doubt he was on a registry and perhaps never even had a background check.

The point being, publishing a list of registered gun owners probably doesn’t tell you much about who has guns or how many they have. It doesn’t seem to serve much purpose.

On the other hand…if they’re going to continue to sell Bushmasters and the like, I would very much like to know who has one, though I doubt it would do much good. What I really want to see is realization that some firearms shouldn’t be available to private citizens, period. And beyond that, some recognition of the “well-regulated militia” clause, requiring registration and firearms training for legal ownership of any firearm other than a bb gun or air rifle. It’s a sick joke to cling to the fiction that allowing anyone and everyone to have virtually any type of gun they like, registered or not, training or no, in any way meets the standard of a “well-regulated militia.” One can’t very well call up the presumed “members” of this “militia” if one does not know who they are.

Isn’t the whole point of the doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret?

NPR this morning:

Vice President Joe Biden is getting ready to make recommendations on how to reduce gun violence in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

But he says his task force is facing an unexpected obstacle: slim or outdated research on weapons.

Public health research dried up more than a decade ago after Congress restricted the use of some federal money to pay for those studies.

[...]

Art Kellermann was raised in eastern Tennessee, where his father taught him how to shoot a long gun when he was 10 years old. Kellermann grew up to become an emergency room doctor — and a target for gun-rights groups when he started asking questions like, “If a gun kept in a home was used, who did it shoot, and what were the consequences?”

Kellermann found people turned those guns on themselves and others in the house far more often than on intruders. “In other words, a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense,” he says.

Kellermann says the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment advocates leaned on his then-employer, Emory University, to stop the research. That didn’t work.

So, he says, “they turned to a softer target, which was the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], the organization that was funding much of this work. And although gun injury prevention research was never more than a tiny percentage of the CDC’s research budget, it was enough to bring them under the fire of the NRA.”

Gun registration is not nationally required. One of the proposed reforms is to require registration by federal law. The demonstration that, as you say, once registration is required and is public information, owners are subject to similar action, doesn’t seem likely to pursuade large numbers of reasonable (but private) people to support registration.

Even if he found the guns location online and even if thats the reason he decided to break into the house… I’m still ok with publishing the info.

Guns attract crime, guns encourage violence.

This is the perfect example if the perp admits he targeted the house to get the guns.

Keep the presses rolling. More names, more addresses, more public information. Turn the light of day on ‘em. My car and motorcycle are registered and public. I want no less for those who possess deadly weapons.

and require them to carry insurance on all their guns just like your car or bike.

So the point of this post is: a gun-owner was the victim of a burglary, therefore guns don’t prevent home invasions. double QED! Take that gun nuts!

Possibly relevant to this… Submitted without comment, other than a shudder of horror.

“If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.”

(That’s not a quote from here.)

Where the f*&K do people think “outlaws” get guns? They steal them from “law abiding” gun owners. Lets cut off the source and let attrition do the rest.

That would be correct if you didn’t actually read the words that were written in the post.

There’s no reason to think that a gun registration law would necessarily mandate the ownership records be made public.

the only way to protect your guns is … more guns

Logic straight out of the gospel according to Clint Eastwood

Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman): You see, the night that Corky walked into the Blue Bottle, and before he knows what’s happening, Bob here takes a shot at him! And he misses, ’cause he’s so damn drunk. Now that bullet whizzing by panicked old Corky, and he did the wrong thing. He went for his gun in such a hurry that he shot his own damn toe off. Meantime Bob here, he’s aiming real good, and he squeezes off another, but he misses, because he’s still so damn drunk, and he hits this thousand-dollar mirror up over the bar. And now, the Duck of Death is as good as dead. Because Corky does it right. He aims real careful, no hurry, and… BAM! That Walker Colt blew up in his hand, which was a failing common to that model. You see, if old Corky had had two guns instead of just a big dick, he would have been there right to the end to defend himself

Unforgiven

Keep the presses rolling. More names, more addresses, more public information. Turn the light of day on ‘em. My car and motorcycle are registered and public. I want no less for those who possess deadly weapons.

I’m with you on the registration, but have one caveat with what you say here. No one is publishing a list of Maserati, Cadillac, or even Toyota Camry owners on the front page so it can be cross-referenced with their addresses.

Isn’t the whole point of the doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret?

You win the thread

sorry, you *cannot* make a man understand something when his self-worth depends on not understanding it.

Yeah, someone said something similar…

Everybody take a deep breath. The linked article does not allege that the victim was burglarized as a result of his inclusion in the list of registered gun owners, nor do the police. The article also does not allege that the burglars sought only to get at the contents of the gun safe, and in fact does not detail what was actually taken in the burglary, and nor do the police or the victim himself.

Just calm down, gun owners and gun control advocates alike. You’re bent out of shape over nothing.