The Journal News (White Plains, NY) yesterday published and mapped all the gun owners in Westchester and Rockland Counties in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley. When they did that, they broke every concept of journalistic ethics. The community has reacted in outrage, as it should. The Journal News‘ article and maps are a positive menace to every member of the community, whether said member owns a gun or not.

The Journal News on gun control

Any long-time reader of the Journal News knows how its editors feel about guns: no one should have them, except the cops and maybe the army. The tone of this and other editorials, and every article they write on the subject, gives them away. Read what they said of Wayne LaPierre after he called for armed guards in school:

He was unbowed, unapologetic, and, ultimately, unhelpful and irrelevant. He left an aching and anguished public, and all those looking for a meaningful and intelligent response to the bloodletting, with clear evidence the gun group will stand its ground, no matter how many wide-eyed first-graders and their teachers are vanquished.

In other words: we’ve got to get all those guns out of the hands of civilians and reserve them for cops only! Can’t you see the logic after all those kids got killed?

As Rahm Emmanuel famously said,

Never let a [good] crisis go to waste.

The Journal News takes revenge

The Journal News secured a place in the infamous Fishwrap Axis with its latest article.

So yesterday the Journal News decided to take revenge on gun owners. They published their names and addresses, and even mapped them. The headline for their lead article says it all:

The gun owner next door: What you don’t know about the weapons in your neighborhood

“The gun owner next door”? They might as well say “The kill-crazy nut next door.” For that’s what they mean. The Journal News quoted one witness:

I would love to know if someone next to me had guns. It makes me safer to know so I can deal with that. I might not choose to live there.

Really? But the same laws that might let your neighbor buy guns, lets you buy guns, too. So what’s to stop you?

So to settle a score with everyone who values his Second Amendment rights, the Journal News put up their names and addresses, as if to shame them.

And when they did that they put every person in danger, whether he owns a gun or not. Consider:

The gun permit holders will first become the targets of every liberal activist wannabe with too much time on his hands. They may at least expect to wake up the next morning to find their trees “rolled” with toilet paper. Or, more to the point, thieves would try to break into their houses and steal their guns.

But what about those who don’t have guns? Well, other kinds of thieves would know where they could break in, steal, and get out, with no chance that the homeowner might catch them (“citizen’s arrest”) or even wound or kill them. Or worse: the first kind of thief might break into the gun owner’s house, steal his guns, then “do a job” on a non-gun-owner’s house. And if they kill anyone in the second house, they might “throw down” the gun owner’s weapons at the scene. That way, they can make the killings look like a neighborhood feud gone bad. Eventually, the police, and the first target’s defense lawyers, might figure out that a third party targeted both people and killed the second. By then the burglar-murderers would be long gone out-of-town, or out-of-State.

Readers dress the Journal News down

To their credit, nearly all who read the article, dressed the paper down for what they did. (The Journal News admitted this.) Said one:

The Journal News does it again. A poorly written article trying to sensationalize the anti-gun frenzy. No journalistic work just cut and paste. How about visiting Mount Vernon or Yonkers and tracking the real danger, unlicensed guns.

And another:

Does anyone understand that anti-gun laws do not work? The killer in Newtown was below the age minimum to legally carry guns. He used them in gun free zone. He stole the guns from his mother. That would be THREE laws he broke. How would more gun laws prevent another tragedy? What is more dangerous than guns?

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That witness probably knows. What’s dangerous is someone having a gun, who won’t stop at killing someone with it. That proves the point that I, and to a lesser extent Wayne LaPierre, made: the only sure defense against a maniac with a gun, is you with a gun.

Another witness told WND something more sobering:

People choose to own handguns for a variety of reasons, personal defense being the most common. How many victims of domestic violence, armed to protect themselves from an abusive spouse or boyfriend, [did the Journal News put in jeopardy] by releasing this information? How many vulnerable seniors [did they put] at-risk by revealing the fact that they own guns?

And again: how many of their neighbors did the Journal News put at risk by telling every thief in those two counties that they don’t own guns?

Here’s the strongest comment, and the one that Fox News Channel picked up on:

This is CRAZY!! Why in the world would you post every licensed gun owner information?? What do you hope to accomplish by doing this? This is the type of thing you do for sex offenders, not law abiding gun owners. What next? Should I hang a flag outside my house that says I own a gun?

Again: the Journal News might as well have flagged every house whose owner does not own a gun.

CNAV does not have a Peter Johnson or a Judge Andrew Napolitano on its staff. But the Journal News does seem to have laid themselves open to lawsuits by any resident, of either county, who suffers a burglary and especially a burglary-murder, whether said resident owns a gun or not. If the resident owned a gun, then the thief-murderer was after his gun. If not, then the thief-murderer knew whom he could “hit” with impunity.

Thanks, Journal News. Thanks a lot. And you wonder why the Mainstream Media is in such foul odor today.

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