Last month, the Journal News sparked a firestorm of protest when it published a mappable database of every licensed gun owner in Westchester and Rockland counties, north of New York City. The paper obtained the data—which New York state law explicitly and unambiguously demands be made public—through open records requests. The reaction was swift and furious—gun rights and privacy advocates published the names and addresses of the paper's editors in retaliation, and the paper (ironically) hired armed guards to protect against threats.
One weird reaction came from TV wraith Ann Coulter, who told Fox News' Sean Hannity last week: "If we're producing lists of gun permit owners, I want them for Manhattan. I want to know how many rich liberals with their body guards have gun permits." You're in luck, Ann. I happened to have just such a list in my filing cabinet. Here it is.
Below is a 446-page list of every licensed gun owner in New York City. I obtained it from the NYPD two-and-a-half years ago via a Freedom of Information Law request. Because the NYPD is more interested in raping and/or eating ladies and spying on Muslims than it is in honoring public records law, the list contains only the names, and not the addresses, of the licensees. (If you're curious, here's what section 400.00 of the Penal Law of New York, entitled "Licenses to carry, possess, repair and dispose of firearms," has to say on the matter: "The name and address of any person to whom an application for any license has been granted shall be a public record." The only way to get the associated addresses from the NYPD, as the law requires, would be to take them to court, which no one has apparently done.)
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them."- Galileo Galilei