May 8, 2007

Shooting One's Own Foot

Just because you can publish something doesn't mean it's a smart business move. In an age when the deer have guns, especially. ACK has more here and here on The Tennessean's decision to publish a list of Tennesseans who have a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

The paper published the database in connection with its story on legislation moving through the state legislature that would allow concealed-carry permit holders to carry their guns in state parks. I happen to think it's good legislation, though I'm not a concealed-carry permit holder.

As a longtime journalist I hesitate to criticize The Tennessean for publishing the database - it is, after all, public record - although I think the journalistic reasoning for publishing it is a little thin. The legislature is moving legislation to allow motorcycle riders to ride without a helmet, but the paper hasn't published a database of Tennessee's licensed motorcyclists, after all.

Also in the paper's defense, the paper didn't publish a list of concealed-carry permit holders, but rather just created a search tool where you can search by town and by last name. You can't use the paper's search tool to create a list of, say, all the people in Brentwood who have a concealed-carry permit. Now, if the paper was engaged in a project to make all of Tennessee's public records more easily accessible via the web, I'd be praising them for doing so, even if it included the gun carry permits. But in singling out gun carry permit holders, the editors of The Tennessean had to know that, given the paper's historically anti-gun rights editorial stance, the blowback for doing so was likely to be severe.

By publishing the database the paper also has made it likely that the "gun lobby" would push for the records to be made private. That is what happened in Virginia after a newspaper there did what The Tennessean did.

For safety reasons, concealed-carry permits probably ought to be private. Making concealed-carry gun permits public records undermines the whole "concealed" aspect, after all.

In the end, though, the information The Tennessean published today is public record, and the paper has the right to publish it. The primary criticism ought not to be directed at the paper, but at the legislature that thoughtlessly allowed the carry permits to be public records.

Update: More reaction from Blake Wylie.

Update: A reader comments that Tennessee doesn't have a "concealed-carry" permit law, but a "carry" permit law. Permit holders can carry their weapons openly. Most permit holders don't, of course.

Update: Just as The Tennessean had the right to publish the database, the public it serves had the right to complain and the paper has listened to those complaints.