Posted on 01/04/2010 5:29:19 AM PST by Abathar
SEARCH GUN PERMIT DATABASE State lawmakers submitted a series of bills this week to protect the privacy of Hoosiers who hold gun permits.
At least three different bills have been filed, legislators said.
The proposed laws would prohibit the Indiana State Police from publicly releasing the names, home addresses and other identifying information about permit holders.
Current law allows anybody to purchase the state's full permit database for $32. It includes a permit holder's race, height, hair color, eye color and more.
Rep. Peggy Welch, D-Bloomington, Sen. Greg Walker, R-Columbus, and Rep. Mike Murphy, R-Indianapolis, each submitted a bill to cut off that access, they said.
Public permit data causes problems, Welch said.
It "either tells people where handguns are, or where handguns are not," Welch said.
The Herald-Times and the Indianapolis Star both published heavily edited versions of the state's permit database in recent months.
Murphy said the newspapers took conservative approaches, where others might not have.
"It was only the Star and the H-T's editorial discretion that limited their databases to (what they were)," he said. "But now we are full of bloggers and all kinds of people who are not bound by the same professional concerns." "To protect the safety of gun owners and non-gun owners, it is better to have this information available only to law enforcement," Murphy said.
Murphy said the newspapers took conservative approaches, where others might not have."
LOL! Conservative approach my a**, no other papers in the state bothered to announce and print all the ways people could get to this database like they did.
You mean a Democrat from Bloomington signed up to limit access to gun permit holders info????
Yep, the conservative approach would be to NEVER publish ANY of the data under ANY circumstances. But, that would require some serious forethought, of course.
It’s time to take back the country.
Right. The Evansville Courier Press, rated the Best Daily Newspaper in Indiana in 2009 published nothing. It wouldn’t have mattered to me if they had published my name. Everyone who knows me knows that I pack.
Privacy issues are not just important to the right, in fact the left pushes for privacy for their causes harder than we do sometimes.
I understand politics; Accept undesirable amendments to gain the support of fence sitting committee members in order to get the bill out of committee but this is absolutely idiotic.
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