I don’t know about New Jersey, but in many States with just your first and last name and county of residence I can get a list of any taxed real estate you own, which would include information on the parcel such as address etc.
In Virginia you can’t do that without going in person to a place of record; but I know some States (unwisely, I think) you can just run a search on a county assessor’s website by owner last name and get property information.
I admit it is a dick thing to do, but I also think the pearl-clutching from it is being overplayed quite a bit.
I would say to those people: targeted by whom? The rest of us unarmed masses, flailing our melee weapons at you while you shoot us from afar? That’s kind of hilarious. Now even having guns isn’t good enough to protect you not only from criminals with guns, but criminals without guns. I’d say that idea is silly paranoia. Those with guns are not likely to rise up against those identified to have guns, and criminals are equally likely to burglarize a home if you’re out whether or not you have a gun.
To them I’d say: own up to the responsibility. They want to pretend to be soccer moms and dads while owning a firearm, but not the responsibility of letting people know. If the neighbor is some kind of criminal, or wacky birther moron, a voodoo priest, or whatever unsavory character that may give the rest of us pause to reconsider our friendship, I’d want to know. Just because they’ve been able to hide it all this time doesn’t make it right. I’m sure that if they were sending their kids over to my house to play and I had an open pit of poisonous snakes that I use for snake handling, they’d want to know to. It seems these gun owners feel that information should only flow one way, towards them, and that whatever they do is not up for discussion or scrutiny. I want to know every single one of my neighbors who has a gun, an unfenced pool, or a ex-con in their household so I can determine with full information whether I should let my kids play there or myself be in their company
We’ve had data on gun violence for decades. We know about guns and its connection to suicides, accidental, and purposeful shootings. Yet every time in a debate gun people want to claim we don’t have the data. Well, we do have data. We must act on it instead of pretending that there is no data to support any one side or the other. One is more likely to be shot if one owns a gun. Accidents are more likely. Suicides are more successful. We know this.
Alright, we’ll just disagree on this point then.
So then other than “Because I can”, why do gun owners have guns with regards to protection? Do they think it makes them less safe? I mean, its pretty obvious here, they have it for protection because they think it makes them safer. Now people will know not to mess with them. Other than the paranoia of not wanting anyone to know anything about you, I can’t see how they’re less safe. There are no roving gangs of unarmed hand-to-hand fighters going around beating up gun owners.
Its been addressed a few times already. With most homes having a weapon in the first place, it seems the default is for a criminal, if they are not into cash, jewels, or identity, to assume that a home has a gun. As it has been mentioned, it doesn’t tell people who carries it, where its located, if its locked up, if its a valuable gun, etc. You’d have to come up with a criminal who wants a gun, can’t/won’t buy one, and breaks into homes specifically to steal one. And that’s considering that whether or not you have a gun, if a criminal breaks into your home when you’re not around it doesn’t make you any more or less safe in the first place. A lot of assumptions
So your contention is that a thief, knowing there’s a gun, will now spend more time looking for a gun, even though he’s just as likely to assume that he can’t find it or that the owner’s carrying it?
Then you’re annoyed that the threat of this average burglar is going to make the gun owner do a little more to secure his gun than just leaving it on the kitchen table? If that’s what you think will happen, I say good, the extra annoyance is a fair tradeoff for knowing which one of my neighbors can blow me away in an argument
What’s done is done. Maybe you guys would be more open to a law that requires owners to register firearms and report stolen guns now?
Why don’t they just break into a gun shop?
Maybe I’m in the minority, but the map showing pinpoints for all the legal gun owners is a great argument against gun control. All these siupposedly dangerous guns are around, so if you believe the media there ought to be gun violence and mass shootings aplenty. Instead, most if not all of these gun owners have excercised their legal right and no one has been harmed as a result.
I am generally quite left-leaning, but I hate the thought of regulating such a large number of law-abiding citizens because of the actions of such a very very few.
I love how YogSosoth has ignored all the arguments pointing out how stupid an argument it is to make sweeping generalizations about all gun owners, but continues to do so. Again with the assumption all gun owners are lunatics, all gun owners have a problem, all gun owners only buy guns for protection etc. Why would anyone discuss anything with a person making such absolutist claims? That’s almost pit-style antagonizing to boot.
At the end of the day though, YogSosoth is someone who said he thought it was good that children died if their parents were gun owners. That’s a monstrous position.
Nope can’t find me that way either. Don’t own property.
Actually, this incident has made me far LESS willing to support laws requiring firearms registration. Happy with that?
Professional thieves do target gun shops. That’s the reason why most gun shops have tons of security (far more than the average house).
Why is regulating them such an anathema, though? We regulate all sorts of things, cars, drugs, food.
But should you decide to own property one day, this sort of easy web access to property records could pose some real problems for you. Which isn’t right.
If the DMV is restricted from sharing car registration information publicly (as Iggy’s post indicates), why can’t we pass some laws offering a similar amount of privacy protection with other records?
really. You find it difficult to believe that a criminal would want a gun?
you know what sells well on the streets (and to other criminals)? Guns. This newspaper stunt is likely to put more guns in the hands of criminals.
I posted a cite earlier showing how easy it is to break into a safe. given the known information of what is in someone’s house a thief can bring the appropriate tools.
You’re a victim waiting for a stolen gun.
Agreed. We have to regulate guns somehow. We just have to make sure we are regulating in an effective way.
I ride up to the mountains with my friend at the wheel. I’d like to consume a beer on the ride up. It would be perfectly safe and cause no harm. Yet my right to do so has been taken away. Okay, I accept that. Keeping all open container alcohol out of cars in Virginia may keep others from drinking and driving. I don’t like to give up my right to do what I wish, but I can see how it might be in the common good to have this law.
Guns are a really gnarly issue. It is not as simple as most arguements on either side seem to make it. We see the statistics about the millions and millions of guns out there, and the number of guns used in crimes is a very low percentage of them. All those guns must mean there are a whole lot of people who own guns, most of them decent folks who are harming no one. I don’t own a gun, and have no desire to own one. But if we are to force a large number of my law-abiding fellow citizens to change something that is important to them, we should be at least be sure the restrictions on freedom aren’t just knee-jerk ineffective reactions, but actual changes that will make a difference.
It sort of is.
The responsibility of… ?
What are they pretending to be? How are they pretending?
Then you can ask them if they are any of those things. But if they don’t want to tell you, it’ll be hard for you to find out - and that’s because you don’t have any particular right to know.
“Want to know” does not equal “right to know.”
What information are they demanding about you? It seems to me the only thing they’d rather not disclose is their handgun registrations.
See above. There’s lots of stuff I would like to know about other people, but that doesn’t mean I’m entitled to know it. It means I’m nosy, and if I don’t want to disclose that information about myself, I don’t have much cause to demand other people tell me their business. If you are actually interested it’s not that hard to find out about your neighbor’s property; there are online databases for that or you could just visit the houses. You can find out if someone is a registered sex offender and you can run background checks on people in various ways, but not everybody’s life is public for your consumption. You may also be able to find gun license registration through FOIL and FOIA requests. But it seems to me you’re more interested in making judgments than actually informing yourself.
Right. So what does that have to do with publishing these names and addresses?
Right. But the other stuff you’re posting is nonsense.
“Don’t confuse me with the facts!”
I’ve not heard of legally-obtained cars, drugs, or food being confiscated by the government.
(OK, that’s not quite accurate. I’ve heard of people who happen to have a lot of money and driving a nice car, having their cars confiscated by law enforcement because law enforcement decides that the money and cars were obtained with drug money, and that the proceeds of confiscating them would be good for the town coffers. There’s no evidence, but they do it anyway.)
In any case, I haven’t heard of any U.S. government body declaring that cars capable of speeds above 100 mph are contrary to the Public Good, and trying to ban and confiscate them. AFAIK no government body has banned Cream of Mushroom soup and tried to confiscate it.
Same here. I’ve been called a Socialist, and many people think I’m too strident in my support of left-wing causes. But I’m also a firearms collector. Nearly all guns in this country are not used to commit any crimes, and fewer still are used to commit violent crimes. It’s like saying that a certain car was used to intentionally ram a crowd of pedestrians, so people call for all of that kind of car and cars similar to it to be banned.
Privacy in this country is a right that is continually being eroded by private and government entities. If I owned an aircraft, my name and address could be found in seconds if someone knows the N-number of it. But most public records are not disseminated to thousands or millions of people. I may not want someone to know who and where I am by looking up my hypothetical airplane. Similarly, I do not want ‘everyone’ to know where, as a gun-owner, I live.
Someone might say, ‘He owns a plane, therefore he’s rich and I can rob him.’ Someone else might say, ‘He has a gun, therefore if I want a gun I can rob his house when he’s gone.’ But the real issue for me is that I don’t want someone publishing my personal information because that information is something I want to make known or not make known myself. If I am a public figure, then I reckon I’m fair game. As a private individual, I want privacy.
But you have heard of governments enforcing safety regulations on cars and people being licensed to drive cars. But the analogy is dumb anyway, everything is different and is regulated differently. Anyway, why do you go straight to confiscation, nobody said anything about confiscation.
Because the agenda of the anti-gun crowd is to get rid of guns. Not all of the people on that side do, but dome do. Others want to outlaw certain types of firearms. In California, a law was passed that certain firearms must be registered. I complied with the law. A certain one of my firearms was not on the ‘banned list’. (In fact, I bought it at a gun store after the law was in effect, and it was not subject to the law.) Later, that firearm was added to the list. Only the State didn’t exactly publicise the new regulations. When I found out, accidentally, that there was a new regulation, it was too late to register. Had I been caught with that firearm, it would have been confiscated and I would have been charged with a crime. I removed it from the state, and later moved out of the state (not related).
I am not aware of any jurisdiction confiscating firearms after registration, but this is one thing that the more paranoid gun owners are afraid of.
I don’t believe for a minute that most people on the Gun Control side want to get rid of all guns. Nor do I believe that most people in the NRA want unlimited access to any gun by all.
What we are struggling to do is to find some kind of common ground to reduce gun violence and allow law-abiding citizens to have the protection (and variety gun collection) that so many want. This is a thorny issue. What doesn’t help is for either side to mis-represent the other.
The gun in the Newtown shooting was stolen. The person who stole it was denied a gun because of the regulations we already have.
No they just want to get rid of the guns the majority of gun owners have. We can see this in cities like Chicago.
Your point being what exactly?
Another point to consider: we live in a mobile society. What if a now-known gun owner moves away? A burglar might target that residence, searching for a weapon which isn’t there, and possibly even ambush the new non-gun-owner who now lives there, demanding to know where it is?
Earlier this year, something similar happened to a woman. Her husband had just died of cancer, and right after his funeral, some guy showed up searching for painkillers he assumed her husband hadn’t used yet before his death.