spreading the wealth

Since it is becoming apparent that the staff of the Commercial Appeal does not care about the opinion of the public they are supposedly serving, it is time to take this one step farther – to the people who pay them for advertisement space. After poking around on their webpage for a while, I have found these companies/organizations that have taken out paid advertisements at the Commercial Appeal webpage (if you find any more, please leave a comment with their name and contact information):
First Tennessee Bank – contact page link.
Serenity Day Spa – contact email.
Cellular South – contact page link.
Royal Furniture – contact email.
Samuel’s Furniture – contact email.
Southland Chrysler Jeep – contact page link.
Lord’s Tabernacle Bible Institute – contact email.
Briarcrest Christian School – contact email (for the school’s president).
And I took the time to send them all a copy of this email:

Sir or ma’am,

My name is [NAME], and I am a proud Tennessee resident and handgun carry permit holder. It has come to my attention that your company has paid advertisements on the webpage of the Commercial Appeal, a newspaper that has decided to violate the privacy of hundreds of thousands of my fellow law-abiding Tennessee citizens by having a public, searchable database of handgun carry permit holders ( http://www.commercialappeal.com/data/gunpermits/ ).

I understand that the information available on that database is, unfortunately, public data, freely accessible to those who would be interested in it. However, the extent to which the editors of the Commercial Appeal published this information goes far beyond the public’s specious “right to know”, and ventures far into the realms of personal intrusion, privacy violation, and possible endangerment.

I procured my handgun carry permit to more adequately defend myself and my family from those who would do me harm. As a rule, I do not make my possession of this permit public knowledge, not out of some misplaced sense of shame, but rather as a continuation of my desire for safety, security, and privacy. Unfortunately, this new database puts all handgun carry permit holders at risk, not only in their homes, but also on the streets. Handgun carry permit holders would only have the permit if they possessed an expensive item that would yield a high price on a streetcorner deal, or be of great use to a criminal looking to expand his rap sheet, and now, with the information available on the Commercial Appeal webpage, those law-breakers know exactly where to find hardware to potentially steal. Furthermore, simply walking down the street turns into a concern, should a criminal happen to visually know someone in this database, and wish to relieve that person of his firearm, or “prove” himself to his buddies by standing up to the big, bad permit holder.

Additionally, this database has been categorized under “Public Safety” at the Commercial Appeal webpage, along with three databases of criminals and two databases of accidents. Handgun carry permit holders, by their very definition, are not criminals, they are not “accidents”, nor are they a risk to public safety, and the implications and insinuations generated by this assocation are distasteful to the extreme.

As a law-abiding citizen, a handgun-carry permit holder, and a concerned husband, I will not purchase any products or services you or your subsidiaries offer until such time as either you withdraw your advertisement from the Commercial Appeal webpage, or the Commercial Appeal staff takes down the database in question. I simply cannot bring myself to patronize a company that financially supports the possible endangerment of law-abiding citizens through the invasion of their privacy.

Please be advised – this letter, as well as any response you send, will be posted at my website ( http://www.wallsofthecity.net ).

Thank you for your time,
[NAME].

Granted, this is just a shortened, modified version of my initial letter to the Commercial Appeal, but it should get the point across. Feel free to copy-paste, edit, and use either of them to your own devices.
Two, last, interrelated thoughts: First, fully 50% of the random advertisements that show up on the Commercial Appeal webpage are, in fact, links to their subsidiary, specialized pages. The other half are just the above companies’ advertisements repeating over and over and over again. Second, since they have so few advertisers, hitting the Commercial Appeal in the pocket book will be very easy for us to do.
Have at it.