Just two days before Christmas last week, The Journal News kindly advised all readers of the locations of gun owners, and of the locations of their unarmed neighbors, in the two New York counties of Westchester and Rockland.  The JN‘s Putnam County outing is pending.

They write, with an absolutely straight face, in justification of this invasion of privacy:

Anyone can find out the names and addresses of handgun owners in any county with a simple Freedom of Information Law request….

So they thought they’d do the home robbers, second-story men, and leftist anti-gun kooks a civic favor by outing these private citizens themselves, and save those others the trouble.

The good citizens of New York know better, and they object to this arrogant abuse of journalistic”…practice.

One objected:

Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves?

Another

You have just destroyed the privacy of these law abiding citizens and by releasing this list, you have equated them to that of sex offenders and murders.

And another:

These are law abiding gun owners, they are no danger to anyone except for criminals.  And with this information you have made them targets for both criminals and anti gun lobbyist who i am sure are going to treat them like monsters.

And another:

Tom King, president of the New York Rifle & Pistol Association, said the release of additional pistol-permit information [beyond the currently releasable name and address] would endanger gun owners, some of whom have valuable collections of weapons.

You’re giving a shopping list to criminals.  Does it matter if you own 47 guns or you own one gun?  Everybody likes to think that someone who has all of these guns is evil, that there’s some nefarious reason they have all these guns.  There are collectors.

And another:

Paul Piperato, the Rockland county clerk, said he’s always uneasy providing it.

You have judges, policemen, retired policemen, FBI agents—they have permits.  Once you allow the public to see where they live, that puts them in harm’s way.

Only a fool thinks judges and law enforcement personnel don’t have a plethora of enemies.

And there’s the hysteria and illogic of the anti-gun folks.  Jackie Hilly, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence Executive Director, insists

You don’t have more success with more guns.  You certainly don’t want our schools turned into armed camps.

Never mind that armed guards, or teachers or school staff trained and armed, don’t make the schools “armed camps.”  This is just an hysterical exaggeration.

Never mind that, presently, we give more protection to our banks and the money therein than we do our children.

Never mind that when the bad man comes and seconds count, the police will be only minutes away.  Absent an armed presence at the scene of the murders, the killing just goes on until the police can, finally, get there.

Never mind, even, that guns are not involved at all in one-third of mass killings.

The Journal News, though, in all of its wide-eyed innocence, is careful to point out that their reporter

Dwight R. Worley owns a Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum and has had a residence permit in New York City for that weapon since February 2011.

But his dot isn’t on the map of gun owners and of unarmed homes that the NJ so kindly published.  Oh, wait—Worley isn’t in the counties he outed; he’s in NYC.  How convenient.

Merry Christmas