4 ms·

This seems like borderline deranged paranoia to me; what do you expect these powerful people to do given the registry of automatic gun owners? Are you expectin

This seems like borderline deranged paranoia to me; what do you expect these powerful people to do given the registry of automatic gun owners? Are you expecting a WW2 French Revolution style situation where the moral resistance will be stronger because of the unregistered firearms? Most of these guns are bought on credit or debit cards, so the information about big ticket gun buyers probably unregulated available through Palantir or whoever.

coredog64 4y ago
It doesn’t take any paranoia. There’s been several instances of journalists using FOIA requests to get the names and addresses of firearm owners and then publishing them. It just happened again in California post the recent USSC decision: An LA journalist requested the names and addresses of current permit holders.
- esrauch 4y ago
  And then what bad thing happened? And if FOIA is really the problem (not the government knowing) then the registry could be made legally exempt from FOIA. The government keeps databases including all of your income (IRS) and your religion (the Census) but random journalists can't get the information.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- elmomle 4y ago
  I believe the paranoia is misplaced. I'm not aware of a single instance in the whole history of the US where a citizen was targeted by members of the public primarily on the basis of their owning a gun (or holding a permit)--are you?
  - refurb 4y ago
    https://www.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-map/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-map/in...
    - esrauch 4y ago
      What is they point of your link? The information was made public, but no one whose information was disclosed had any known negative outcomes of that happening. It seems like evidence that a registry is fine: apparently even when a registry is public it didn't result in the owners being "targeted", so a private registry visible only to law enforcement would be surely even safer than that.
      - idiotsecant 4y ago
        I think you're being disingenuous here. Having your name and address attached to a story about how damaging you are to society is not desirable, and if you can't acknowledge that I think you're not arguing from an honest place. Imagine whatever opinion you might have that is controversial, even mildly so. Now imagine that a new story about how that opinion makes you dangerous to society also includes your name and address in it. I think the harm here need not be a physical attack on someone, intentional intimidation is a mild form of violence itself.
        esrauch 4y ago
        > attached to a story about how damaging you are to society I reread the cnn link again and I still don't know about the article you're referring to; from the text of the CNN article it sounds like it was solely a map and all of the other quotes are from people worried about the potential harm like burglaries. The CNN article doesn't actually even say the names or specific addresses of the gun owners was published, it only describes a map with dots. Overall I'm not sure that that map is actually more risky than a map of where the atheists live, and we don't stop collecting that info on the census. The census data has never been leak published to my knowledge. So even if it is true that example of a published map was a horrible safety violation, that only means that the data shouldn't be available to journalists, which is different than saying the data shouldn't be allowed to be known by anyone in government. The census and IRS are examples of the government being able to maintain secrets, so I don't buy the idea that it would be inevitably leaked if a gun registry had similar legal protections. And it doesn't seem to support some risk of evil powerful people who are going to do something nefarious with this data once they get into power, which is what the thread above is about.
refurb 4y ago
It's not paranoia. Canada created a "long gun" registry to "keep people safe". Then they started banning specific long guns. The registry let them know exactly who owned what. It's the same reason why some European countries don't include race or religion in their national IDs. When the Nazi's took over, the existing governments registry of individuals made is real easy to track down all the people they wanted to eliminate.
- lozenge 4y ago
  So the registry allowed laws created under a democratic system to be implemented, and that's.. bad?
  - refurb 4y ago
    Yes if your a person who believes those rights are unjustly being denied. (The registry was eventually scraped because of non-compliance, less than 25% of estimated guns were never registered).
chasd00 4y ago
It’s not paranoia doxing gun owners from a registry has already happened at least once. https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-map/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-ma...

coredog64 4y ago

It doesn’t take any paranoia. There’s been several instances of journalists using FOIA requests to get the names and addresses of firearm owners and then publishing them. It just happened again in California post the recent USSC decision: An LA journalist requested the names and addresses of current permit holders.

esrauch 4y ago
And then what bad thing happened? And if FOIA is really the problem (not the government knowing) then the registry could be made legally exempt from FOIA. The government keeps databases including all of your income (IRS) and your religion (the Census) but random journalists can't get the information.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
elmomle 4y ago
I believe the paranoia is misplaced. I'm not aware of a single instance in the whole history of the US where a citizen was targeted by members of the public primarily on the basis of their owning a gun (or holding a permit)--are you?
- refurb 4y ago
  https://www.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-map/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-map/in...
  - esrauch 4y ago
    What is they point of your link? The information was made public, but no one whose information was disclosed had any known negative outcomes of that happening. It seems like evidence that a registry is fine: apparently even when a registry is public it didn't result in the owners being "targeted", so a private registry visible only to law enforcement would be surely even safer than that.
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      I think you're being disingenuous here. Having your name and address attached to a story about how damaging you are to society is not desirable, and if you can't acknowledge that I think you're not arguing from an honest place. Imagine whatever opinion you might have that is controversial, even mildly so. Now imagine that a new story about how that opinion makes you dangerous to society also includes your name and address in it. I think the harm here need not be a physical attack on someone, intentional intimidation is a mild form of violence itself.
      - esrauch 4y ago
        > attached to a story about how damaging you are to society I reread the cnn link again and I still don't know about the article you're referring to; from the text of the CNN article it sounds like it was solely a map and all of the other quotes are from people worried about the potential harm like burglaries. The CNN article doesn't actually even say the names or specific addresses of the gun owners was published, it only describes a map with dots. Overall I'm not sure that that map is actually more risky than a map of where the atheists live, and we don't stop collecting that info on the census. The census data has never been leak published to my knowledge. So even if it is true that example of a published map was a horrible safety violation, that only means that the data shouldn't be available to journalists, which is different than saying the data shouldn't be allowed to be known by anyone in government. The census and IRS are examples of the government being able to maintain secrets, so I don't buy the idea that it would be inevitably leaked if a gun registry had similar legal protections. And it doesn't seem to support some risk of evil powerful people who are going to do something nefarious with this data once they get into power, which is what the thread above is about.

refurb 4y ago

It's not paranoia. Canada created a "long gun" registry to "keep people safe". Then they started banning specific long guns. The registry let them know exactly who owned what. It's the same reason why some European countries don't include race or religion in their national IDs. When the Nazi's took over, the existing governments registry of individuals made is real easy to track down all the people they wanted to eliminate.

lozenge 4y ago
So the registry allowed laws created under a democratic system to be implemented, and that's.. bad?
- refurb 4y ago
  Yes if your a person who believes those rights are unjustly being denied. (The registry was eventually scraped because of non-compliance, less than 25% of estimated guns were never registered).

chasd00 4y ago

It’s not paranoia doxing gun owners from a registry has already happened at least once. https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-map/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/25/us/new-york-gun-permit-ma...