commercial fisking

*headdesk*
It seems as though the Commercial Appeal (and, more specifically, its editor – Chris Peck) cannot stop putting up half-assed rationalizations for their handgun carry permit holder database. Once more into the fisking breach I go.

Misunderstandings with people who carry guns can turn ugly.

Oh, sure, make it all about the firearm already, as if it changes the situation significantly. Misunderstandings with anyone can turn ugly… if you end up kissing some girl at a bar, and her boyfriend gets pissed off, guess what – your misunderstanding just got ugly. Demonizing law-abiding citizens is not going to do you a whole lot of good, Chris.

This past week it has been ugly at the newspaper, after passionate gun owners latched onto three very wrong ideas about why The Commercial Appeal’s Web site now lists all those in Tennessee who have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Aww, you poor baby… I feel such an outpouring of sympathy for you, really, I do. Wait, no, that is not sympathy…
Oh, and for clarification, my “handgun carry permit” does allow me to carry a handgun in a concealed manner, but it also allows me to carry it openly, on my hip, in plain sight. I know this is a scary concept for you, but them’s the laws.
You are right about one thing, though – I am passionate about my rights, I am passionate about being legally able to defend myself, and I am passionate about my personal privacy. Oh… wait a second… that whole “passionate” thing was just another ham-handed attempt to paint firearm owners and carriers as hot-headed yahoos shooting at everything that moves, right? Your bias is showing there a bit, jackass.
But let us see what these “very wrong ideas” are, shall we?

– Wrong idea No. 1: The newspaper is against the Second Amendment that gives Americans the right to keep and bear arms.

Ok, ignoring the whole “wrong idea” part for the moment, it is time for some Constitutional education, since it seems Editors of smallish newspapers do not really need to worry about the technical details of our primary governmental document.
The Second Amendment gives nothing.
The Second Amendment recognizes and protects our natural right to self-defense, as granted by us being human beings.
That self-defense can be against a home-invader trying to cause harm to my wife and I, it can be against some punk kid trying to rob me in a Wal-Mart parking lot, or it can be against some tyrranical government trying to subjugate me as a human and as a citizen. However, that right to self-defense (and, more specifically, to “keep and bear arms”) is inherent in me as a human, and is granted to me with or without the Second Amendment.
As for this being a supposedly “wrong idea”, Chris’ later words expose himself, so we will table that discussion for the time.

– Wrong idea No. 2: The newspaper is invading people’s privacy by posting the permit-to-carry-guns list on its Web site.

I am sorry, but this is far from being a “wrong idea” – the very fact that I have a handgun carry permit is an issue between me and my state, and of no concern to you. Yes, it is a public record. But it is also a matter of personal privacy. Or would you like it, hypothetically, if someone started publishing the public record of your criminal history (not that I would know if you have one, just speaking hypothetically)?

– Wrong idea No. 3: Posting the list is empowering criminals.

If you cannot honestly see how the information contained in the database would be beneficial to criminals, you either have a room-temperature IQ, or you are intentionally being obtuse. Which is it?

The Tennessee Firearms Association and others have fanned the frenzy against our Web site posting of the permit-to-carry list. Pro-gun groups orchestrated a protest campaign that has spread nationwide. By late last week, Commercial Appeal executives were receiving as many as 600 e-mails a day, along with dozens of phone calls at home, at work and on their cell phones. Maps to their houses, with ominous warnings, had been posted online.

I know how the concept of “grass roots” is probably a foreign one to you, but here is the breaks. Both the Tennessee Firearms Association and the National Rifle Association were late-comers to this party. I found out about your invasion of my privacy through another weblog I read, and shot off all of my emails to you and your fellow staff-mates a full day before I received any correspondence from the TFA or the NRA. So, how, exactly, could those two organizations have fanned anything, when the forest fire had already started?
Furthermore, if you are receiving that much negative correspondence about something you did, you bloody well should have started getting the idea that you did the wrong thing. Or are you really that slow?
Oh, and how dare you complain about being contacted at home or on your cell phone, when you go and make my personal information known to the world? How does it feel to have the shoe on the other foot?
So where are the links to these “ominous warnings”, Chris? You run a newspaper, you have to understand the concept of documentation, so where are the examples? Because, running a quick search of “‘commercial appeal’ handgun carry permit“, I cannot find a single example of an “ominous warning”… unless you find people calling others to cancel their subscriptions and to boycott your sponsors to be “ominous”. To me, that sounds like concerned citizens exercising their rights to free speech, and their rights to fund, or not, organizations they approve of, or disapprove of. Deal with it.

Our crime? Putting up a Web-only database that allows people to search by name or ZIP code for those who have a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Tennessee. The list came from the Tennessee Department of Safety and is available to anyone who wants it, simply by contacting the agency’s office. The state of Tennessee, to this point, has decided that the right to carry a concealed weapon comes with the responsibility of agreeing to have a public record of who is packing.

Again, the permit allows for carrying both openly and concealed. Also, it only applies to handguns.
Well, it is not a crime yet, but I certainly hope it will be. Nice try with the whole martyr act, though.
Also, there is a significant difference between having to go through the Department of Safety records department, submit a request, file the paperwork, provide the state its pound of flesh, identify yourself, wait the days/weeks/months for the paperwork to come back, and then sift through it all; and being able to run a search from the comfort of your own home, and have answers back in seconds.
You are facilitating, and do not even have the spine to admit it.

The newspaper did edit the state’s publicly available list. We removed street addresses and birth dates from the information to lessen any chance that somebody might use information on the list for identify theft. As a result, our posted list of permit holders for concealed weapons has less information about individuals than the phone book, your voter registration form or the credit card you use to buy dinner at a restaurant.

… And again, the permit allows for carrying both openly and concealed. Also, it only applies to handguns.
Oh goody, you removed street addresses – not like I cannot just go to WhitePages.com, punch in your first name, last name, and zip code, and come up with your street address, phone number, and all kinds of other interesting information on you. Oh wait, we already did that. Remind me to thank you later for your generosity.
And I am going to have to fly the bullshit flag high and proud on your last sentence. Neither the phone book, nor my voter registration form, nor my credit card identify me as a handgun carry permit holder. As such, your cute little database already has more information available on it than those three combined.
One last little point on this paragraph, though. Your database claims to account for all permits issued as of 08JUL08, and active today. Furthermore, as of 2022 on 15FEB09, it shows 184,809 entries. On the flip side of the equation, the Tennessee Department of Safety (kind of the authority of this whole shebang) claims that there were 196,472 active permits as of 30JUN08.
Your database is short 11,663 entries. You are damned right that you “edited” the database – who did you remove, and why?

No matter. The posting of this list somehow conjured up deep fears about personal safety, criminals and the media being soft on crime and hard on the Second Amendment.

No kidding – that is what happens when you violate people’s privacy, publish their information for the world to see, and victimize an entire cross-section of society that was simply trying to exercise its Constitutionally protected (not granted) right to self-defense.

This newspaper isn’t soft on crime. We know that crime is the No. 1 issue that needs to be addressed in Memphis. We urge public officials to get tough on crime. We back Republican-led efforts to take a hard line on gun crimes and repeat offenders. Only last week we gave prominent coverage to Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton’s call for a tougher gun-offender registry in Tennessee. We hope that proposal comes to pass so we can post the names of all who commit gun offenses and the names of all those arrested for carrying a gun without a permit.

This is starting to sound just a little too much like the stereotypical, “My best friends are black!” tactic right after someone gets accused of racism.
What about a tougher criminal registry, in general? Why is your fixation constantly on firearms? You obviously do not have any problems publishing information concerning felony convictions and hate crimes, what about all crimes? Your bias is showing, yet again.

And we’re not enabling criminals by posting the list of Tennesseans who have carry permits.

Aaahhh…Aahhhh…AhhhhCHOOO!!! Sorry. I am allergic to bullshit.

Think about it for a minute. Many, if not most, households in Memphis possess a firearm. So you don’t really need a list to find a house with a gun.

You really do like the argumentum ad populum logical fallacy, do you not? Where is your proof? Where are your statistics? Where is any manner of documentation?
For supposedly being a newspaper editor, you surely do not have a clue about investigatory journalism.
Furthermore, put yourself in a criminal’s shoes. If you are very interested in procuring a firearm, and you are given a list of houses that are guaranteed to have firearms in them, where would you go to procure said firearm? Or would you ignore that list, and start checking random houses, just because?

And, if criminals were checking the permit-to-carry list before picking a target, would they likely choose a house where they know the owner could be carrying a gun, or would they more likely steer away from that house to avoid a possible confrontation?

I honestly have no idea, not being a criminal myself. However, are you comfortable with your actions, given how they could potentially endanger either set of law-abiding citizens? If an abusive husband uses this information to track down a woman who left him and procured a firearm for her self-defense, could you live with giving him the tools to effect her discovery?
I surely could not.

Neither logic nor common sense is carrying the day on this issue. It’s emotion. After listening to dozens of phone calls, it seems that the issue, for them, boils down to a simple core equation: I have a constitutional right to possess a firearm; any effort to infringe on that right will be opposed.

You are damned right that neither logic nor common sense is evident in your writings… oh, wait, that is not what you meant? Sorry.
As for emotion, the writer over at The Flypaper Theory beat me to dealing with this particular paragraph: “In other words, in the wake of a shooting involving a man with a handgun carry permit, some people naturally became fearful of others with handgun carry permits. The Commercial Appeal was all too willing to oblige that fear, amplify it, and give it direction.”
You are absolutely right, Chris, your overriding issue in putting up this database, in trying to defend said database not once, not twice, but three times now, in writing up this entire charade, is emotion – you are trying to fan emotions in order to drum up readership, drum up traffic, drum up attention. You found a hot-button issue, and by God, you are going to pound the shit out of that button. Yellow journalism, at its worst. Congratulations.
Additionally, what is wrong with recognizing and standing up for our Constitutionally-protected rights? Why do you have such a problem with this?

For all those who are a notch or two away from a strict black-and-white view of gun rights, there’s a powerful case to be made both for a permitting process to carry concealed weapons and for keeping that permitting process public.

… And again, the permit allows for carrying both openly and concealed. Also, it only applies to handguns. Please use the right terminology if you are going to argue about something.
Speaking personally, I do not have a problem with the permitting process. I have some qualms with the costs involved, but, for the time, I am fine with the handgun carry permit process.
However, if there is a “powerful case” for making the permitting process public, you have failed to make it yet, and your future prospects are not looking good.

To begin with, the permit-to-carry law helps identify responsible gun owners. If you are a felon, have committed a crime with a gun, have a history of mental problems, etc., you can’t get a permit. That’s good for society.

Wierd. Here we are in the 16th paragraph-ish section of your article, and it is the first one I have agreed with in its entirety. So why do you have such a problem with “responsible gun owners”?

Next, violation of the permit-to-carry law can lead to an arrest. In other words, somebody stopped for a traffic violation or frisked at a bar, who has a gun but no permit, can be busted right there. Another plus.

To be fair, transporting a firearm is not considered a crime in Tennessee, so long as the ammunition and firearm are separated. Something tells me you were neither familiar with that clause, nor referring to it in the above comment, but, again, clarity is the soul of writing.

Finally, when somebody who has a permit for a concealed weapon messes up with a gun, they lose their right to have that concealed weapon. For example, Harry Raymond “Ray” Coleman, the Cordova man charged recently with shooting a man to death after an argument about whether the dead man’s SUV was parked too close to Coleman’s vehicle, will lose his permit to carry a concealed weapon. Isn’t that the way it should be?

… And again-again-again-again, the permit allows for carrying both openly and concealed. Also, it only applies to handguns. Are you intentionally trying to obfuscate, or do you not know that of which you speak?
At any rate, something tells me that none of the people who called you, emailed you, or wrote you disagree with you on that point. The man committed a crime. He murdered another person. He should lose his handgun carry permit (along with a whole raft of other rights). Was there a point to this strawman?

That’s a good segue into why the permit-to-carry list needs to stay public.

Uhm… no, not really. On the one hand, you have a cold-blooded murderer. On the other, you have hundreds of thousands of law-abiding, peaceful, private citizens. How are those, in any way, related?

News events like the Feb. 6 shooting at Trinity Commons shopping center led many people to wonder, logically and instantly, who else might be packing a gun. At the point of that shooting, the online list of who is licensed to carry a concealed weapon became a matter of deep public interest. That’s why, during the past week, thousands of people looked at the list that had been sitting mostly unnoticed on the Web site for two months.

Openly and concealed. Again. *sighs*
As for your cute little database, it has received some traffic from people horrifiedly seeing if their neighbors are packing, no doubt. However, it has also been receiving a lot of traffic (and I would wager the larger portion of traffic, though I have no data to support the bet) from the “grass roots” movement I mentioned earlier, in addition to the publicity actions by the TFA and NRA that you mentioned earlier. Or are you just going to discount the traffic generated from those emails for the sake of this argument, and then hold up those emails as bogeymen for other arguments?
Furthermore, like you said, this information is “available to anyone who wants it, simply by contacting the agency’s office.” Interested parties could do exactly what you (or, more likely, one of your lackeys) did, and go down to their local TNDOS offices, and get their own cute little list. Kind of talking out of both sides of your mouth, are you not?

A mom might now check the list to see if the parents at her kid’s sleep-over next door had a concealed weapon permit. If so, maybe it would be worth talking to them to make sure the gun is locked up.

Handgun carry permit. It very clearly does not state “concealed” or “open” or any other details. Also, it does specifically say “handgun”.
However, this particular comment, in and of itself, clearly shows your bias for what it really is. As you mentioned previously, homes throughout Tennessee have firearms without their residents also having handgun carry permits. Also, like I said, the permit only applies to handguns – what about long guns? Little Suzie could be going next door to a sleep-over, and you could never know if those parents had a firearm in the house. Furthermore, since the firearm in question is in the house, how does a handgun carry permit have anything to do with it?
Nope, your entire problem, your entire issue, your entire drive behind this whole database is the firearms. The permit holders are just ancillary to your primary goal, and since there is no such thing as a database of firearm owners in general, you went for the next-best thing.
Like I said back in my response to your supposedly “Wrong Idea No. 1″, your words more than betray you, and betray just how hollow your claim of support of the Second Amendment really is.

A school official, concerned about whether teachers were bringing guns onto school grounds, might check the list to see whether anyone on the staff has a permit to carry, and then have a discussion about it.

Hey bucko, that is already illegal – see Tennessee State Code 39-17-1309: “It is an offense for any person to possess or carry, whether openly or concealed, any firearm, not used solely for instructional or school-sanctioned ceremonial purposes, in any public or private school building…” So, was that particular sentence yet another pointless strawman, or you admitting to your own ignorance of the topic you are writing about?

Business people who sell goods and services that might be of interest to those who carry concealed weapons might use the list to generate new leads.

Right, and businesses who are not fans of firearms, or people who carry them, could also use this list as a discriminating factor as to whether or not to hire or retain an employee. Of course, being the upstanding, honest, moral journalist you are, I am quite certain this thought never crossed your mind, and I am doubly certain that no one would do such a thing… [/sarcasm]

But there is one overriding, enduring reason the permit-to-carry list needs to be public. Once a concealed weapon is pulled out at a shopping center, a hospital or a business, what happens next with that gun becomes a matter of public concern to everyone.

Strangely enough, once a weapon (concealed or not) is pulled out and pointed at someone, the pointee just committed assault, and thus it becomes a matter of public concern to everyone because the police get involved. Granted, in most cases concerning handgun carry permit holders, that act of assault is justified, and thus not necessarily a crime, but the police still get involved, the judicial system has its say, and the people get all the information and justice they need. However, so long as that firearm stays on my hip, in its holster, and pointed at nothing except the floor, I have no idea why its presence should be your business, or anyone else’s. Furthermore, you have completely failed to make your case concerning that point.

That’s why commercialappeal.com posted the list. It’s a tiny bit of local information, and we’re in that business of gathering and distributing local information.

Who knew that violating law-abiding, peaceful, private citizens’ privacy was also part of your job description? What is next – are you going to start publishing databases of everyone who has ever had a vehicular accident in their lives? After all, you certainly would not want the aforementioned hypothetical Suzie riding around with someone who wrapped their first car around a telephone pole! And that is certainly “local information”.

Granted, news organizations do have some things to learn about this changing media world where print is about stories and online is about data and search. We need to learn how to massage databases more efficiently to tease out particular information, such as how many convicted felons in Shelby County have a concealed weapons permit. (Nine, as it turned out when we did this story back in August 2008.)

Good lord man. The bloody piece of plastic very clearly says “Handgun Carry Permit”. Use the right language, for Heaven’s sake.
Nine convicted felons, out of a pool of 29,544 handgun carry permit holders – all said, a failure rate of 0.03%. And based off a failure rate that would put most other governmental systems to shame, you took it upon yourself to publish the personal information of all 29,535 other Shelby County handgun carry permit holders… along with the data on the rest of the state? I fully agree that even one failure is too many, but this is just taking it too bloody far.
Also, interesting that you would use the phrase “massage the data”, considering that you omitted 11,663 records from your database. Why, exactly, did your “massaging” result in them being left out?

We’ll learn. The feedback, flaming and otherwise, from gun owners concerned about this issue has been helpful. But there isn’t much room to go back on this mixing of news in print with data online. If it’s not The Commercial Appeal doing this, then it will be Google or a hundred Web sites. As more news and information gathering shifts online, local newspapers like this one simply must make sure that those who are searching for information about local communities are directed to newspaper-based information sources. That’s why we continue to add databases to our Web site for people to use. We’ve already got restaurant cleanliness scores, missing IRS refund checks and school test score results. We’re working on addresses of sex offenders, real estate transactions and more.

So just because everyone else is doing it (by the way, no one else has a searchable database of handgun carry permit holders up, but try not to let that get in the way of your pointless argument), it is ok for you to do it? Sorry, that just does not fly, morally relativistic society or not.
Interestingly, though, this is yet another topic where you unwittingly expose your motivations behind this database… you are not doing it for some lofty goal of “providing information”… no, you are doing it to try and keep your paltry newspaper afloat in this time of digital information. Physical papers are folding left and right, but the digital news sources throughout the web are staying alive, if not thriving, so it is time for you to spearhead that transformation, right? And, like I said, if you happen across something that just coincidentally brings more attention to your site, well, you might as well just ride that horse until it drops, right? Let me know when you start putting up the databases concerning non-criminal vehicular accidents, or who smokes and who does not (after all, we would not want Suzie exposed to second-hand smoke), or who deep-fries their Thanksgiving turkey as opposed to baking it. Because that is pretty much how far you are invading my privacy, and the privacy of the hundreds of thousands of other handgun carry permit holders in Tennessee, in some misguided and twisted attempt to keep your newspaper solvent and “fresh”.

So can we exhale on this?

Just as soon as you take the database down.

The newspaper isn’t anti-gun. We are pro-news and information. That’s our job, and we want to do it right.

Suffice to say, you are failing at your job almost as bad as you are failing at being honest.
…
Whew. That was a darned lot of typing. I would let Chris Peck know I provided him a response to his editorial, but I already know that it would be deleted, and his inbox is probably a little full at the moment. Such is life, I suppose.
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