The Missouri State Highway Patrol has admitted that on two separate occasions it has given to federal investigators, without benefit of a court’s warrant or other order, personally identifying information concerning 163,000 Missourians who also had Missouri-sanctioned concealed weapons permits.  The claimed purpose of the federal demand was a fishing trip concerning potential Social Security benefit fraud, but only gun owners seem to have been singled out for this treatment.

Missouri law makes it illegal (at the misdemeanor level) to disclose information about concealed gun permit holders.

Governor Jay Nixon and members of his administration, in wide-eyed innocence, are insisting that there’s nothing wrong with this.  Andrea Spillars, Department of Public Safety Deputy Director had this justification:

There’s nothing in the law that prevents [a federal investigator] from getting that information in batch form[.]

It’s likely that these are honest men and women who actually believe their claim.  They just don’t understand, apparently, the distinction between “illegal” and “wrong.”

This is why we can’t trust Progressives in government.  They simply have not even the first particle of understanding of the difference between right and wrong.