Alphecca

South Dakota Newspaper Lists Gun Permit Holders

The Argus Leader of South Dakota is another of those rags that think that crooks and burglars have a right to know which houses might have firearms in them and so conveniently makes a database available for those needing a shopping list:

The Argus Leader compiled a database of concealed weapons permits from paper records provided by the secretary of state's office. Staffers typed in the name, city of residence and date of birth of every permit holder as of June 30, 2006. The process involved as many as three staff members at a time, working for four weeks.

The records, which had been open to the public in South Dakota for decades, were closed July 1 after the Legislature voted to limit public access to the data.
Open-government advocates and some law enforcement officials have argued that keeping permit records open benefits the public. Citizens have occasionally recognized names of people who ought not to have a permit because of a history of domestic violence or mental health issues, for example.

The Argus Leader is making its searchable permit database available online. You are invited to contact us or the appropriate law enforcement official with any concerns or questions on the permit information.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas there, what with a lot of folks from South Dakota vacationing in warmer climates and here we have a newspaper providing a tour map of homes that crooks and mutants can likely steal handguns from.

And isn't it helpful of them that they would go against the will of the legislators and the people who elected them by defying the new law and making the names so readily available on-line?

Want another example of the editors' bias? Here's some quotes from the primary article:

More than 41,000 South Dakotans have permits to carry handguns or conceal them in their cars - the highest rate per capita in the nation, an Argus Leader analysis shows.

Records compiled from the state - and now barred from public view, under a law passed this year by the Legislature - show that 7.4 percent of South Dakota adults had such a permit as of June 30. Next closest are Indiana and Pennsylvania, with 6.4 percent of adults licensed to carry a handgun.

Okay, so far so good, right? Read on...

Nationally, gun ownership can be linked to homicide and suicide rates. The link is tenuous at best in South Dakota, where actual ownership of guns far exceeds the number of permits granted.

So gun ownership is "linked to homicide and suicide rates." But not in South Dakota. Gee, maybe, then, the Argus Leader should instead consider that it is the toleration of criminals or those elements (can you say "gangs") that is the link to homicide rates, etc., not gun ownership per say.

The article also states that there are firearms in 60% of South Dakotan homes yet while S.D. does have a high suicide rate -- as do all northern states where winters are long, dark, and depressing -- only 1/5 of those suicides are committed with firearms.

Naturally the newspaper drags in the usual anti-gun "experts" to bolster their feeble argument:

"All else being equal, households that have guns are more likely to have suicides and also they are more likely to have homicides, especially among women," said Matthew Miller, a health policy researcher at Harvard University.

He said the presence of guns raises the stakes when the owner is in despair or angry at a spouse.

"A gun turns what isn't lethal into a lethal event," he said.

But even Miller admits that S.D. has a very low murder rate which he says is because the state is mostly rural. So he is admitting that it isn't the gun and firearm ownership that causes crime but is instead the criminal that causes crime!

As several readers of the article have pointed out, shame on the Argus Leader for publishing the list of CCW permit holders and further, one of them says,

That is officially IT. I am NOT EVER renewing my subscription again to this dish rag. I encourage every other South Dakotan to join likewise as this paper has run amok as it has relentlessly tried to create the news and controversy instead of report the news.

That's the first solid observation in the whole newspaper: Creating controversy and news where there isn't any. What liberal media?

Posted by Jeff Soyer at December 18, 2006 06:47 AM