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Ohio Newspaper Under Fire for Outing Gun Owners
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
July 05, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - An Ohio newspaper's decision to publish the non-public records of concealed carry permit holders drew a strong response, and one gun rights advocacy group published personal but public information about the newspaper's editor.

The Sandusky Register on June 24 published the names, ages and home counties of the almost 2,700 concealed carry permit holders in its circulation area. Ohio gun laws restrict public access to concealed carry records but allow the media to access them.

The printing of the names sparked outrage from gun rights groups, including the Ohioans for Concealed Carry and the National Rifle Association. Critics argue that publishing names and identifying information about concealed carry permit holders puts them at risk being targeted for violence or identity theft.

"Now, someone who has a grudge has a list of targets/victims, and the only reason they have a list of targets/victims is because of the newspaper's unilateral action," the Buckeye Firearms Association said on its website.

BFA Legislative Chair Ken Hanson wrote that because of the newspaper's actions, "The general public may now know who owns and may or may not carry a gun. Additionally, the general public now knows who is not carrying a gun in their day to day activities."

In retaliation - and to illustrate the ease of finding personal information when given a name - the BFA began printing personal information about Sandusky Register Managing Editor Matt Westerhold. The information, while personal, is available through public records searches.

On its website, the group has printed Westerhold's phone numbers, automobile records, traffic ticket record, the address of a home he owns and information about the mortgage on the property. It has also printed redacted information on his birth date and Social Security number.

Cybercast News Service has independently verified most of the information through online public records searches, including his birth date, partial Social Security number, property holdings, and mortgage information.

The group defends its actions by saying that Westerhold, by approving the publication of the names and information about gun owners, is putting them at risk for the same kind of "this type of stalking/abuse."

Westerhold did not respond to phone calls and e-mails from Cybercast News Service requesting comment for this article.

In a commentary defending the publication decision, Westerhold acknowledged that the concealed carry permit holders are "law-abiding and upstanding" but said the decision to print their names was a "public service to readers who want to know who among them has been licensed to carry concealed weapons."

"They should be proud to be exercising their second amendment rights, and I believe most of them aren't as enraged with the Register's decision to exercise its first amendment rights in publishing the information as is the NRA, which demands secrecy," Westerhold wrote.

Ohioans for Concealed Carry President Jeff Garvas issued a statement criticizing the Register for choosing "to put a juicy headline controversy with no journalistic newsworthy content ahead of the safety of the public." He called for Westerhold's resignation and encouraged members to target advertisers to encourage them to abandon the paper.

A similar controversy erupted in Virginia in March. As Cybercast News Service previously reported, the Roanoke Times retracted its online database of Virginia concealed carry permit holders after a backlash from gun rights advocates revealed that some of the information was inaccurate and some of it shouldn't have been released.

http://digg.com/world_news/Ohi...for_Outing_Gun_Owners


http://www.cnsnews.com...Nat.....70705a.html

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This is the idiot responsible:
419-609-5866 or mattwesterhold@sanduskyregister.com
This is his boss:
Doug Phares, Publisher
419-609-5860
dougphares@sanduskyregister.com
This is the paper:
Sandusky Register:
314 West Market Street
Sandusky, OH 44870
419-625-5500
800-466-1243 (Toll Free)

 

Kudos to the BFA. We need to see more of this kind of behavior.

 

Yeah what if some woman was on the run from an ex-husband and had a CCW for protection? What if someone was trying to stay hidden from a stalker, a criminal who had it out for them or any number of other reasons? Now they had the information to do them harm. Gee thanks Sandusky Register. I hope you got your point across. You hate guns and those who own them and you wish they were dead. Mission accomplished.

Do you know why this actually happened though? Whose fault it really is? It is our fault. This is what happens when we allow a RIGHT to be infringed and a LIBERTY to usurped by the government. We let it happen. When free men have to go crawling before a bureaucrat begging for their God given Liberties we are all debased. When you must go beg for a slip of paper to exercise your rights guaranteed to you in the Constitution we've lost something. There must be something about living on one's knees for so long that makes the thought of being able to do such a thing feel like a victory. Hey! We're winning now! Look what the state lets us do! Ain't it cool! They had no right to stop you to begin with!

We've just finished "celebrating" the Forth of July. The signing of the Declaration Of Independence. Remarkable document. Anybody read it lately? I'm not talking about the "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" that gets spouted ad nauseam because it's so fashionable. I'm talking about the text of the abuses or grievances that are listed. One can read through that list and apply many if not all of them in some form to the Government today. It's shocking. In fact the "long train of abuses" are far more numerous and severe at the hands of our own Government than they were at the hands of the British government.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." - Well, apparently not when there is pizza delivery, TV and sports. aka bread and circus. Liberty be damned! A bunch of guys are chasing around bouncing a ball on TV!


Declaration of Independence

For your reading pleasure if you're so inclined.

 

I wonder if the paper would be comfortable printing lists of others names such as abortion providers, abortion doctors, the children of politicians, their own employees, liberal bloggers, etc, etc....

QUOTE FOR TODAY:

Honor Student -- Concealed Carry School

 

Of course, none of that would be "news worthy"...

 

Ahhhh The Fourth Estate. They're our betters you know. It's not that they don't like guns. They're actually fine with them. It's just that they want only those they approve of to have them. The state which they control. The police. Or their bodyguards.

It's the thought of those who that they cannot control having arms that angers them so. They just hate those people. They'd like to see those people disarmed. They'd pass the laws that would demand that it be done. Oh THEY won't do it. They would send some else son to go do it. If THEY think those arms are so evil and such a threat THEY should go take them. Don't send someone else's son to die for their cause. THEY need to go do it. Just how many newspaper editorial board members would be willing to kick down doors if THEY had to do it? How many member of Handgun Control Inc (or whatever they call themselves now)would? Would Chuck Shumer or Dianne Feinstein?

By the way, don't think they'd ever order such a thing done? They did it in New Orleans and the US military did it without question. The US military and police kicked in the doors of US citizens and forcibly disarmed them. It was carried out without question by federal troops.

Sleep tight.

 

Bump....I have been hearing some more of this going on in other cities recently.

 

That artical is totaly FUBAR!!!!!! I hope that news paper gets what it has comming to them!

 

I noticed in the local paper that there was an AP story that Obama is asking potential cabinet members about their private gun ownership. To celebrate his election I went out and bought a .30-06. If I had more money available I would have got a Bushmaster. I wonder if the newspaper in question has published the names of child molesters so families can know if they are in the neighborhood. Probably not... Wouldn't want to trample on their rights.

 

If I were in Ohio I would start a class action movement against the paper...... they might not win anything but just the point would be worth it......