AG Shuts Down Link to VA Carry Database
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
Virginia gun rights activists were holding something of an Internet “victory dance” after State Attorney General Bob McDonnell ruled that a list of concealed carry license (CPL) holders should not be available under the Freedom of Information Act, so the State Police closed that list.
This might never have happened were it not for a Roanoke Times editorial writer’s zeal to make that information public. Columnist Christian Trejbal wrote a column Mar. 11 that pointed readers to an Internet link where information on license holders was available.
The column set off an avalanche of angry e-mails and telephone calls, primarily from concerned gunowners who did not like their names, and particularly their addresses, being open to the public. In e-mail reactions to Trejbal’s column, readers repeatedly expressed anger and concern that burglars and other criminals could target their homes to steal firearms. There were other complaints from, and on behalf of, women who had armed themselves.
Trejbal did not respond to a request from Gun Week for an interview.
In his original column, Trejbal offered this justification for throwing open the records on who has a CPL: “Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone’s business.”
“People might like to know if their neighbors carry,” Trejbal wrote. “Parents might like to know if a member of the car pool has a pistol in the glove box. Employers might like to know if employees are bringing weapons to the office. And all Virginians have a stake in checking that their government is not making mistakes, for example, by issuing permits to convicted felons. Open records allow the media or any private citizen to check.”
But gun activists, including the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), reacted with a resounding “Not so fast.”
VCDL’s Philip Van Cleave portrayed the newspaper’s effort as “a mean-spirited effort to poke a finger in the eye of gunowners.”
The newspaper, in turn, acknowledged that it was “an editorial writer’s botched attempt to highlight an open record.”
Regardless which version one believes, the end result is that the information is no longer available to the general public.
Into this controversy stepped State Del. Dave Nutter (R-Christiansburg), who asked the state Attorney General for a legal opinion. That inquiry resulted in the three-page reaction from McDonnell, in which he stated, “It is my opinion that the Department of State Police possesses the discretionary authority to release the names of concealed carry handgun permittees.…However, since such list of permittees will include the names and other personal information of crime victims and witnesses, it is my opinion that the identities and locations of these persons should be protected in the interest of public safety.”
The State Police quickly said it would comply with McDonnell’s opinion, and close off the records. Van Cleave said the newspaper should never have published the link in the first place.
“Common decency should have kept The Times from doing so, but clearly any sense of decency was lacking at that paper,” Van Cleave told Gun Week. “That searchable database endangered the lives of untold numbers of permit holders, many of whom were in immediate danger from ex-spouses or from having testified against violent criminals. The Chief Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court was in that database, for example!”
This is not the first time, or the first state, in which a newspaper has publicized the names of CPL holders. Gun rights activists call it harassment of gunowners by the anti-gun media, and in Ohio, an incident there last year triggered an equally blustery firestorm.
But in Virginia’s case, there is some “collateral damage” that Van Cleave discussed in one of his frequent alerts to VCDL members.
“The bad news,” he explained, “is that VCDL, which has been using the CHP holder list responsibly for years, has now suffered collateral damage. The CHP list is a great tool for contacting gunowners on political issues, as well as activating local gun owners when a county, city, or town is misbehaving.”
That avenue to fire up grassroots activism is now lost.
In “exchange” for that, Virginia gunowners are now assured that no other newspaper will be doing the same thing with their personal information.
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