The Media and Gun Owners

The first amendment covers the freedom of the press, however the choice to publish gun-owners names in the paper, along with their addresses, is a very poor decision. It would seem an article speaking in regards to school shootings and gun ownership would be more apt to favor the safety of children. The article instead makes targets out of unarmed households. The article makes a point to ostracize members of the community with firearms, making them out to be harmful members of society. The Journal News made a poor choice in violating the privacy rights of citizens, and now has put more families at risk. Potential thieves have access to protected households; New York is not the most secure area for this information to have been published. I would not compare this to sex offender registry because it lists only the addresses and names of the families. Sex offender registries hold a multitude of data on a person including birthday, eye color, and pictures. Still, the available data on handgun owners provided by The Journal News was private and has put families at further risk.It is the newspaper’s right to publish this public information. That does not mean that it was the correct thing to do. By making this type of information available, it harms both the gun owner, those that are not in possession of a gun, and the journalists themselves. Although I certainly lean towards heavier laws on gun control, I don’t believe in any terms that owning a gun can be equated to be a registered sex offender. My problem with what has happened is that those who do not own a gun or are in legal possession of one will be targeted by criminals/future criminals. I also have a hard time accepting what the pro-gun rights bloggers did to the journalists in revenge. By releasing the journalists’ addresses and other records, the bloggers have opened the door to malicious attacks by other pro-gun Americans. These people can potentially become very dangerous and there’s little to no way of escaping them.