EA Says It's Going To Keep Using Manufacturers' Guns In Its Games -- It's Just Done Asking Permission

from the somehow-I-think-the-NFL-won't-push-over-as-easily... dept

Given the current climate surrounding guns, violent video games and all points where the two intersect, it's not surprising that a large developer like EA would attempt to distance itself from gun manufacturers.

No, EA isn't going to stop making video games with real-life weapons in them. It's going to continue business as usual in that respect. What it is going to do is stop licensing the weapons.

[A]t least one game maker, the second largest by revenue in the United States, is publicly distancing itself from the gun industry, even as it finds ways to keep the branded guns in the games. Electronic Arts says it is severing its licensing ties to gun manufacturers - and simultaneously asserting that it has the right, and the intention, to continue to feature branded guns without a license.

A rep for EA says this decision has nothing to do with the NRA's immediate willingness to lay the blame for the Newtown shooting at the feet of violent video games. But that's a rather tough sell, especially considering the hard line EA is pursuing.

Gun licensing for games has never been particularly lucrative for gun manufacturers, at least not in terms of licensing fees. Most agreements were felt to be mutually beneficial: game developers were able to craft authentic weapons and gun manufacturers received free advertising and the best kind of product placement -- right in the virtual hands of potential customers.

Now, it seems the relationship has become mutually toxic.

"It gives publicity to the particular brand of gun being used in the video game," said Brad J. Bushman, a professor at Ohio State University who has studied video game violence. "On the other hand, it's linking that gun with violent and aggressive behavior."

Bushman's studies on video games and violent media have frequently resulted in dubious conclusions (to put it kindly), but if anyone's going to take him seriously, it's the NRA and gun manufacturers. What once looked like an ideal match now puts gun manufacturers' implicit endorsement of violent video games in a very unfavorable light.

EA may be able to help them out with this. It's not going to give up using real world weapons in its games -- it's just going to stop asking permission.

"We're telling a story and we have a point of view," EA's President of Labels Frank Gibeau, who leads product development of EA's biggest franchises, said in an interview. "A book doesn't pay for saying the word 'Colt,' for example."

Put another way, EA is asserting a constitutional free speech right to use trademarks without permission in its ever-more-realistic games.

EA is going to rely on fair use and it should have a fairly strong case. More promising is the fact that gun makers haven't been very litigious in the past. According to Reuters, a gun manufacturer has yet to sue a game developer over lack of proper licensing. However, the recently introduced friction between these two industries makes EA's new "license-free" stance a bit more combative that it would be otherwise.

This approach almost appears to be EA throwing down the gauntlet and daring embattled gun manufacturers to wander back out into the public eye. There's no way gunmakers will look any better pursuing licensing fees or suing for breach of contract, and EA knows this. Once again, I'm not buying EA's "no harm, no foul" statement in reference to the NRA's recent attempt to toss video games under the bus.

EA may have the upper hand at the moment, but Reuters mentions a pending lawsuit that could spell trouble in the future.

Aircraft maker Bell Helicopter, a unit of Textron Inc, has argued that Electronic Arts' depiction of its helicopters in "Battlefield" was beyond fair use and amounted to a trademark infringement. EA preemptively went to court, suing Bell Helicopter to settle the issue.

Should Bell prevail, EA may find gun makers willing to test the legal waters and attempt to pry EA's unlicensed guns from its cold, injunctioned fingers.

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, guns, licensing, video games
Companies: ea, nra

This Is My Pencil. This Is My Pencil Pretending To Be A Gun. One Is For Writing. One Is For Mandatory Suspensions.

from the school-admins-looking-to-shutter-known-arms-dealer-OfficeMax dept

A majority of human beings would look at two 7-year-old boys pretending their pencils are guns and say something about "boys being boys" or "someone's going to poke their eye out" and leave it at that. Those who craft and enforce zero tolerance policies see something more sinister. They see "threatening behavior" that must be dealt with swiftly and with as little thought as possible.

The end result? Two 7-year-old boys with otherwise clean records were handed two-day suspensions for pointing their pencils at each other and making shooting noises. This ridiculous punishment was (of course) defended at length by school administration.

Suffolk Public Schools spokeswoman Bethanne Bradshaw said a pencil is considered a weapon when it’s pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made.

Really? Administration thinks a pencil becomes a weapon when "gun noises are made." (They don't actually think this, of course. They've just crafted a policy that states this, thus preventing administration members from "erroneously" coming to independent conclusions.) I can see a pencil being considered a weapon if it's being "pointed" (in a stabbing motion) at a sensitive area like an eyeball or a neck. Then a pencil is a weapon.

When two boys point pencils at each other and make shooting noises, a pencil is still a pencil and their imagination is doing all the heavy lifting. All it would take to "disarm" these kids is asking them to stop. Which is what a teacher did.

On the suspension note, the teacher noted that the boy stopped when she told him to do so.

Problem solved. No one is harmed and the perpetrators were left with nothing but non-threatening pencils. Why this was written on a suspension note, rather than on a simple concerned note to the parents or better yet, on NOTHING AT ALL, is beyond me. But Bradshaw has an answer for every question and a terrible excuse for every idiotic zero tolerance policy.

“Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community,” Bradshaw said. “Kids don’t think about ‘Cowboys and Indians’ anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day.”

Do they? My kids don't think about that kind of stuff. Then again, they rarely watch the news. Would my boys be "threatened" by a pencil gun? I doubt it. They're probably packing a pencil or two themselves during the school day. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these hypothetical, hypersensitive children who bruise whenever the wind changes direction do not actually exist, at least not outside of statements like Bradshaw's. They're straw children.

Bradshaw also defended the moronic policy using this gem:

Bradshaw said the policy has been in place for at least two decades.

So... you're saying the administration has been stupidly overreacting since back when MTV still played music videos and no one has once thought that maybe a few policies might need to be updated or relaxed or given a good once over with a dose of context or common sense? Rules can be changed, even big, important ones. (See also: Amendments 1-27 to the Constitution, but pay close attention to nos. 18 and 21.) Nothing's so inflexible that anyone should be reduced to the rhetorical level Bradshaw is, fending off irritated parents with "Yeah, it's a shitty policy but what are you going to do. It has tenure."

Bradshaw doubles down on the importance and inflexibility of "rules" as well.

“It’s an effort to try to get kids not to bring any form of violence, even if it’s violent play, into the classroom,” Bradshaw said. “There has to be a consequence because it’s a rule."

Yeah, I get it. A rule is a rule. And enforcers like Bradshaw are throwing stuff on kids' permanent records that wouldn't pass the laugh test in the real world. Will this file note that the two boys "pointed pencils at each other and made shooting noises?" Or will it state something to the effect that the boys broke the school's policy on violence and threatening behavior? My guess is the latter, which will allow anyone perusing the record to imagine the worst.

We can only hope that having these stories reported widely might push a few administrators to consider loosening or removing these so-called "zero tolerance" policies. Unfortunately, to date most administrators (and their policies) seem impervious to public ridicule, and every school-related tragedy just results in a newer, more rigid set of unbreakable rules. Until the day comes when kids can be kids without being suspended for pretending pencils are guns, parents might want to sit their kids down and have a long talk about safe pencil handling and the requirements and responsibilities that come with the "conceal-and-carry" permit they'll be needing before being allowed to start the next school year.

Filed Under: guns, kids, overreaction, pencils, threats

7-Year-Old Student Suspended For Waving Around A 'Gun' Made From A Pastry

from the 'always-be-a-good-boy/don't-ever-play-with-buns' dept

So, it's come to this. Oh, wait. I've already used that opening, back when I thought the pinnacle of guns-n-schools overreaction had been approached, if not actually surmounted. Let's start again.

So, NOW it's come to this. A seven-year-old suspended from school for crudely fashioning his breakfast pastry into a gun-like shape and brandishing it in the most menacing fashion a gun-shaped pastry can be wielded.

A 7-year-old Anne Arundel County boy was suspended for two days for chewing a breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun and saying, “Bang, bang”— an offense the school described as a threat to other students, according to his family.

The pastry “gun” was a rectangular strawberry-filled bar, akin to a Pop-Tart, that the second-grader had tried to nibble into the shape of a mountain Friday morning, but then found it looked more like a gun, said his father, William “B.J.” Welch.

Yes. A Pop Tart knockoff makes a handy makeshift weapon, perhaps explaining why pastries are no longer served in prisons. When I say "it's come to this," it really has, but it's been a long time coming and there's plenty of precedent.

- Feb. 5, 2013 - A ten-year-old Virginia student was suspended for bringing an orange-tipped toy gun on a bus.

- Feb. 1, 2013 - A 9-year-old student was suspended for bringing a 2-inch toy gun on a key fob to school.

- Jan. 29, 2013 - A 5-year-old student could be suspended for crafting a Lego gun during an after-school program. Not only that, but he'd crafted his fingers into a gun mere weeks earlier.

- Jan. 22, 2013 - A 5-year-old is suspended for discussing her Hello Kitty bubble gun, saying, "I'll shoot you, you'll shoot me and we'll all play together."

- Jan. 2, 2013 - A 6-year-old in a Washington D.C. school was suspended for making a gun gesture with his hands.

- August 28, 2012 - A deaf 3-year-old preschooler is asked to change the sign he uses for his name -- Hunter -- which he signs by forming a gun with his hands. Apparently, "saying" his name violates the school's weapon policy.

- Feb. 24, 2012 - A drawing of a gun by a four-year-old resulted in the arrest of her father when he came to pick her up from school. He was detained by police and strip-searched while his children were questioned by social services. The gun his child depicted? A plastic toy that belonged to his kids.

That's just a sampling. There are many more stories like these out there. There are many that are underreported or never reported, where parents just deal with the ridiculous outcome of zero-tolerance policies. For some reason, many schools still labor under the delusion that "zero tolerance" equals "tough, but fair." It's neither, and utilizing zero tolerance policies simply prunes the whole process back to a disfigured stump devoid of logic, perspective or context.

So, a child eats something and starts playing with his food because it resembles something other than the RDA-approved Pop Tart knockoff. And his school responds by twisting its own weapons policy into a parody of itself. The actual wording pertaining to prohibited items, courtesy of Lowering the Bar, reads like this:

Any gun of any kind, loaded or unloaded, operable or inoperable, including any object other than a firearm which is a look-a-like of a gun. This shall include, but is not limited to, pellet gun, paintball gun, stun gun, taser, BB gun, flare gun, nail gun, and air soft gun.

How does this policy apply to the pastry? That's a great question, and Lowering the Bar doesn't have an answer:

Josh's gun was not a firearm, because it was a pastry, and it seems highly unlikely that it qualified as a gun "look-a-like," again because it was a pastry. It certainly is nothing like any of the "look-a-like" items set forth in the list, largely because those items are not pastries.

The school's logic apparently is that if it vaguely resembles a gun and someone is pretending it's a gun, then it's a gun look-a-like. Case closed.

This, in and of itself, would be pathetic enough. But it gets worse. The school sent home a letter regarding the (non) incident, which hilariously offers the assistance of staff counselors for anyone "troubled" by the weaponized pastry.

Dear Parents and Guardians:

I am writing to let you know about an incident that occurred this morning in one of our classrooms and encourage you to discuss this matter with your child in a manner you deem most appropriate.

During breakfast this morning, one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class. While no physical threats were made and no one [was] harmed, the student had to be removed from the classroom.

* * *

As you are aware, the ... Code of Student Conduct and appropriate consequences related to violations of the code are clearly spelled out in the Student Handbook, which was sent home during the first week of school and can be found on our website, www.aacps.org....
If your children express that they are troubled by today's incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.

Kevin Underhill at LTB adds:

Pretty sure that if your children are "troubled" by another kid biting a pastry into something that looks sort of like a gun and waving said pastry around, you have already failed as a parent.

And I'd add that if you've done even a merely passable job as a parent, the only "feeling" your children might want to "share" is that their school is run by officious asshats, even if they haven't quite developed the vocabulary to say that in so many words. (Don't kid yourselves, parents: they're quite capable of swearing well above their grade level.)

This is the nadir of the education system's zero tolerance weapon policies. Zero tolerance does nothing more than relieve the administrative staff from the possibility of having blood on their hands. No situtation is too ridiculous to be taken seriously -- and punished harshly. Reducing every incident to binary ensures that no school employee can ever be held responsible for overreacting to any perceived "threat," no matter how innocuous. In many ways, the education system is a reflection of our current "homeland security" ecosystem where the endless pursuit of "safety" has become the impetus for thousands of terrible policies, all enforced inflexibly.

There's a way to pull out of this nosedive but it involves many, many people being willing to make judgement calls on the fly and able to face the heat should their judgement falter. Unfortunately for many in the system, the risk is much higher than the reward. For many in these positions, the possibility of being wrong is incapacitating and zero tolerance policies relieve this pressure. Trying to steer the system back towards a greater reliance on common sense won't be easy, but continuing to let it drift in its current direction will do nothing to improve the safety and security of our schools, much less our country.

Filed Under: children, guns, overreaction, pastries, schools, zero tolerance

If You Want Two-Thirds Of Americans To Agree That Violent Video Games Are More Dangerous Than Guns, All You Have To Do Is Ask The Right Americans

from the two-thirds-of-a-foregone-conclusion dept

If you need some handy numbers to argue that violent video games are more dangerous than guns, Public Policy Polling has just delivered a gift-wrapped poll result especially for you. In the middle of a long poll attempting to suss out potential front runners for the 2016 elections, PPP decided to toss in a question comparing violent video games and guns.

There you have it. Violent video games are a "bigger safety threat" than guns, according to two out of three respondents. Seems pretty open and shut. Everyone cross out the word "gun" on your pet piece of legislation and replace it with "video game!" The nation is saved!

Many of you may be reaching for your guns/lower jaw/commenting implement. Before we start firing off mouths/angry wall o' text screeds/bullets, let's have a look at the methodology.

PPP surveyed 800 voters nationally from January 31st to February 3rd. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.5%. We oversampled 416 Democratic and 508 Republican primary voters with margins of error of +/-4.8% and +/-4.4% respectively. In Iowa between February 1st and 3rd we interviewed 313 Democratic and 326 Republican primary voters with margins of error of +/-5.5% and +/-5.4% respectively. This poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews.

This certainly seems above board. So, why do the results seem so surprising? Well, maybe it's the prevailing demographics of those surveyed. As pointed out in the comments at Kotaku, there are two factors that skew the results.

1. 72% of the respondents are older than 45.

2. The "violent video games" question was only posed to Republican primary voters.

Now, this data pretty much agrees with the stereotypical view that older people and Republicans trust guns more than they trust violent video games. Sure, there are plenty of outliers along the way, but the Republican Party has generally fought gun control laws, and older people are generally more distrustful of recent technology. In fact, given a narrow enough demographic, you could probably get poll results that indicates that "most Americans" believe cellphones are a bigger safety threat than depleted uranium.

So, what PPP has actually done is gift-wrapped a set of numbers useful for preaching to the converted. All it does is add to noise that surrounds this heated topic. Considering there's nothing else resembling that question in the other several dozen pages, one wonders why the question appears at all. Truly bizarre.

Filed Under: guns, questions, statistics, studies, surveys, violent video games

New York State Starts Walking Back On Transparency; Grants Gun Owners Exemption From Disclosure Of Public Records

from the first,-they-came-for-my-interactive-map... dept

The backlash against the publication of gun owner data by the Lower Hudson Journal News late last month has turned into a backlash against "freedom of information" laws. Putnam County officials started this regressive ball rolling by refusing to comply with the Journal News' request, breaking a state law in the process. No matter, Sen. Greg Ball was there to share the limelight and offer to rewrite the state law to limit gun owner date to prosecutors and law enforcement.

As was noted then, making exceptions to freedom of information requests on the basis of public outcry is a giant step in the wrong direction. Holding back public records or granting disclosure exceptions simply because the information might be used in an unpleasant way just makes it easier to make more exceptions and withhold more information down the road. This is the direction the state of New York is now headed with the passage of its gun control bill, the NY SAFE Act of 2013, an exemption for gun owners that flies in the face of Governor Cuomo's earlier transparency promises.

Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo laid out an ambitious open government agenda in his state of the state address, declaring his commitment to provide "easy, single-stop access to statewide and agency-level data, reports, statistics, compilations and information." This week he carved out his first exemption: gun owners.

The anonymity exemption, which requires gun owners to provide a reason they wish to remain out of the public record, is a response to the controversy that followed the Journal News' publication last month of the names and addresses of over 33 thousand hand gun permit holders in Rockland and Westchester counties, north of New York City.

The problems with this exemption are obvious. If one set of individuals can effectively "opt out," what's to stop others from claiming they too should be exempted?

"It sets a dangerous precedent," says Noel Hidalgo, Code for America's New York Program Manager, "where special interest groups can exempt their communities." If firearm owners can create an exemption from public disclosure, than why couldn't licensed livery car drivers, healthcare workers, sellers of pesticide or lawyers?

For that matter, what's to stop those in power from crafting even broader exemptions for favored lobbying groups, colleagues or for any other data they wish to keep hidden from the public? It's not so much that this exemption is a slippery slope -- that slope has long since been descended -- it's that placing arbitrary limitations on requested data, especially in response to an isolated incident, compounds an existent problem: the ongoing lack of transparency in many government agencies.

Even worse, there were better ways to handle the gun owner data that would not have required altering existing laws by adding an exploitable exemption:

"Some of the concern with the Journal News dataset is the fact that they put an individual's name and address with a gun," says Hidalgo. According to him, listing gun permit holders by name and zip code or census tract could better satisfy the competing demands the personal privacy and public disclosure, than simply exempting data from public record.

The law gives gun owners a chance to opt out using one of two reasons: belief that publication of their data would put their life at risk (police officers, former witnesses/jurors in criminal cases, etc.) or the wish to avoid "unwarranted harassment." Bob Freeman, the executive director of New York's Committee on Open Government, says this wording is way too vague.

"We're all involved in 'unwarranted harassment' every day of our lives," he continues, referring to his full e-mail box in the morning, and unsolicited calls from journalists as potential examples.

Meanwhile, Sen. Greg Ball's legislation is still in motion, looking to exempt pistol purchasers from FOI disclosure. Those registering for a pistol permit will be automatically opted-in under his proposal. Ball lays part of the blame on modern technology, suggesting that if the information were only a bit harder to attach to a Google map, he'd leave the law unchanged.

When initially established the Freedom of Information Law couldn't possibly be written to factor in modern technology including social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, etc) or advanced mapping technologies like Google Maps. These social media advancements emerged as commonplace tools to access personal information after many public information laws were passed. The advent of the Internet must be considered when working to ensure every citizen of New York has both their privacy and safety protected, guaranteed by law.

Like many lawmakers, Ball only wants to update laws to reflect the "advent of the internet" when it aligns with his agenda. We've seen resistance to update laws that operate favorably for those benefitting from the lack of timeliness, including outdated gems like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or various copyright laws that proponents want stretched past their expiration date in order to treat file sharing like selling bootleg DVDs out of the trunk of a car. Ball's desired update of the FOI law isn't about reflecting the current reality; it's political opportunism that dovetails nicely into the government's natural tendency towards opacity.

The state of New York has taken several steps in the right direction in terms of transparency. Now it's allowing the prevailing winds to push it a step back.

UPDATE(S):

Some last-minute additions, tacked on to the bottom, as this post has already been "put to bed," as they say in places where ink still hits paper.

The Lower Hudson Journal News has decided to take down its "gun map," claiming that it wished to follow the "spirit" of the newly-passed NYSAFE gun law exemptions. Here's the paper's full statement:

With the passage this week of the NYSAFE gun law, which allows permit holders to request their names and addresses be removed from the public record, we decided to remove the gun permit data from lohud.com at 5 pm today.

While the new law does not require us to remove the data, we believe that doing so complies with its spirit. For the past four weeks, there has been vigorous debate over our publication of the permit data, which has been viewed nearly 1.2 million times by readers. One of our core missions as a newspaper is to empower our readers with as much information as possible on the critical issues they face, and guns have certainly become a top issue since the massacre in nearby Newtown, Conn. Sharing as much public information as possible provides our readers with the ability to contribute to the discussion, in any way they wish, on how to make their communities safer.

We remain committed to our mission of providing the critical public service of championing free speech and open records.

And, from the if-you-don't-have-time-to-do-it-right,-how-will-you-find-time-to-do-it-twice department, the rushed NYSAFE bill failed to include exemptions for law enforcement.

A New York lawmaker says that the state’s recently passed gun control law stunningly fails to include any exemptions for law enforcement officers, and technically prohibits police from ever bringing guns on school grounds or possessing extended ammo magazines.

Of course, no one really has to do it twice. A Cuomo spokesman has already verbally exempted police officers from the new law, allowing it to join the many other laws police officers are free to ignore. (Jab!) Presumably, amended language will join the rest of the passed bill early next week. 

Filed Under: gun control, guns, new york, transparency

NRA: Games To Blame For Violence! Also, Here's A Shooting Game For 4-Year-Olds!

from the pr-is-a-skill dept

Attention readers of this article! This is important to realize: I do not hate guns, the NRA, or freedom. While this is not the forum for any of us to discuss our personal philosophy regarding firearms or the 2nd amendment, let's just say my views are nuanced and leave it at that. Again, I do not hate guns. What I do hate, however, is hypocrisy and stupidity, and the NRA has a habit of occasionally engaging in both. I mean, the idea that doctors should by law not be allowed to ask questions about gun safety in "well-child" visits is just stubborn silliness. That kind of paranoia should be reserved for the lunatic fringe, not the most powerful firearms lobbying group in the country. Likewise, the insane idea that the 2nd amendment should be protected by treading upon the 1st and 4th amendments isn't just hypocritical, it's multiplicatively hypocritical.

But if you thought that kind of PR mistake was the zenith for the NRA with regards to their anti-video game stance, prepare yourselves for liftoff, because the NRA has released several shooting games, the latest of which is targeted at elementary-aged school children.

There have been a lot of people blaming violent video games for gun violence in America, especially in the wake of the tragic Newtown, Connecticut shootings. Chief among them, of course, was the National Rifle Association. In his comments after the shootings, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre blamed several video games that featured guns, like Bulletstorm and Splatterhouse, but left off titles like NRA: Varmint Hunter and NRA: Gun Club. He also failed to mention the new NRA branded iOS game which must have been in development at the time, NRA: Practice Range. The new game is recommended for ages four and up, probably because they don't want kids younger than four to see how much fun super-cool guns can be.

Now, in the interest of being fair here, there's an obvious difference in content between games like Bulletstorm and Practice Range or Varmint Hunter. The NRA isn't putting out games in which human being are shot. But that's a rather weak distinction to draw when you've spoken out so radioactively against violence in gaming. The simple glorification of guns for 4 years olds is probably not the best move PR-wise in the current atmosphere, but even having an NRA sponsored game for shooting animals raises questions. The line on shooting living things is crossed and it would be quite easy to point to harming animals as a predictive sign of criminality, violence and sociopathy. Why is the NRA providing a gaming avenue for such behavior while decrying other/more violent games for providing a gaming avenue for that same behavior?

It should be pointed out that, true to their words, the NRA is littering these games with gun safety tips, but from the standpoint of public relations that doesn't really soften how dumb a move this is. To be clear, I don't think the stupidity is in releasing these games. I'm fine with them. The problem is when you seek to deflect criticism for gun violence by pointing to games, all while you're also releasing shooting games, you lose a great deal of credibility. But when you put forth a game that gives you "one minute to fire off as many rounds as possible" and aims it, by their own words, at children as young as four years old, you just look like jackasses.

Filed Under: guns, kids, shooting, video games
Companies: nra

Blowback From Publication Of Gun Owner Data Continues -- Threats, Lawsuits And Rejected FOIA Requests

from the men-with-guns-protecting-journalists-from-men-with-guns dept

The battle over the privacy of gun owners continues in New York. Last week, the Lower Hudson Valley Journal News secured the names and addresses of gun owners in two New York counties, publishing the information as an interactive map and framing the "story" as a public service -- information people would "want" to have following the Connecticut school shooting.

Needless to say, this drew the ire of gun owners, along with others who felt the Journal News had crossed a line by publishing this personal information. In response, the names and addresses of various Journal News personnel were posted and the paper found itself dealing with angry phone calls and comments, along with anonymous threats and mail coated with a mysterious (but apparently, non-toxic) white powder.

Somewhat ironically, the Journal News has now hired armed security guards to protect its business and employees.

The Journal News of West Nyack, N.Y., has hired armed security guards to defend its offices after receiving a torrent of phone calls and emails responding to the paper's publication of the names and addresses of area residents with pistol permits.

RGA Investigations, a private security company, "is doing private security at on location at the Journal News as a result of the negative response to the article," according to a police report first obtained by the Rockland County Times (Nanuet, N.Y.) and shared with POLITICO. The guards "are armed and will be on site during business hours through at least January 2, 2013."

Now, the paper is finding itself stymied by public officials in its search for more gun owner data. Putnam County officials have announced that they will refuse the Journal News' FOIA request, which it had begun compiling before the backlash began. After receiving an "onslaught" of calls demanding that the county not release the data, Putnam County Executive, MaryEllen Odell, has decided to withhold the requested information, earning an ally in State Senator Greg Ball.

"I'm proud to stand with Putnam County and proud that Putnam won't be releasing its pistol permit records," [Ball] said in a statement. "The asinine editors at the Journal News have gone out of their way to place a virtual scarlet letter on law abiding firearm owners throughout the region and I thank God that Putnam County has a clerk with the guts to stand up and draw the line here."

[Putnam County Clerk Dennis] Sant said he was happy to protect law-abiding gun owners in his county.

"There is the rule of law, and there is right and wrong, and The Journal News is clearly wrong," he said in a statement. "I could not live with myself if one Putnam pistol permit holder was put in harm's way, for the sole purpose of selling newspapers."

Ball has also stated that he will introduce legislation to restrict gun permit information to prosecutors and police. A public press conference is scheduled to announce this refusal, but there's a good chance this move won't stand up in court, should the battle head in that direction.

Putnam County officials, who say they will refuse a newspaper's request to release the names and addresses of residents with pistol permits, would break state law by withholding the data, a state official said.

The opinion, of state Committee on Open Government Executive Director Robert Freeman, came after an announcement Tuesday by state Sen. Greg Ball and two Putnam officials that they would refuse to release the data requested by The Journal News of White Plains, which sought the records under the state Freedom of Information Law

Freeman said, the law is clear. "The name and address of any gun licensee are public," he said.

The Journal News will likely appeal the denial, which would then be heard by the Putnam County government. A second denial would route it to a judge for a formal decision. In the meantime, the Journal News is sticking to its proverbial guns, claiming the info dump was in the public interest.

In other bad news for the paper, it has just been named in a defamation lawsuit filed by a local business, which claims that the Journal News piece which named it as a gun owner caused "customers and clients of First Impression LLC to cease doing business, causing damages in amount to be determined."

The filing runs only two pages but is loaded with adjectives.

The two-page, bare-bones Summons With Notice accuses the newspaper of "falsely, maliciously, recklessly, slanderously, libelously and irresponsibly publicly stating in the interactive website www.lohud.com that plaintiff First Impression LLC is a licensed handgun owner."

So, it looks as if the future holds quite a bit of court time for the Journal News. It also looks like this fight over gun owner data isn't going to end anytime soon.

The thorny question still remains: did the Journal News have the right to publish gun ownership? Certainly, the First Amendment grants it the freedom and the fact that the information was gained through legal channels seems to make that "right" argument unassailable. The Journal News was well within its rights to post the information, no matter how irresponsible its use of the information was.

Unfortunately, the many people who opposed the Journal News' actions (which includes people on both sides of the gun control debate) have been vocal enough that government agencies are beginning to arbitrarily withhold requested information, stating a sudden (and unlikely) concern for protecting the privacy of gun owners -- whose permits are a matter of public record. Allowing government agencies to reject FOIA requests because they don't like how the information is being used or are worried about public response is a big step in a very wrong direction. Even worse, grandstanders like Sen. Ball are looking to further restrict the dissemination of information by limiting access to gun ownership data to prosecutors and police. Even if this particular restriction seems logical, the simple fact is once this protection is granted for certain data, the system is opened to abuse by other entities and agencies looking to keep as much info as possible under wraps. This will result in more restrictions and limitations and less actual freedom of information.

Filed Under: data, guns, journal register, journalism, ownership, public information, transparency

MTP's David Gregory Does Journalism, Some Citizens Want His Arrest

from the welcome-to-the-stupid-show dept

The ripple effects from the Sandy Hook tragedy continue to present themselves. When something so horrific occurs, it's not difficult to understand over-the-top reactions, but that doesn't mean those reactions shouldn't be kept in check. We had folks rushing to blame videogames for what happened, despite all evidence to the contrary. We even saw how social media and media-media combined to rush to judgement on the wrong suspect and the wrong related Facebook "likes". Now, one new ripple is that David Gregory is under investigation.

The moderator of Meet The Press found himself the subject of a D.C. Metro PD inquiry over his prop use of high-capacity rifle magazines during an interview with an NRA representative. The inquiry being one thing, there's also a completely misguided White House petition floating around asking for the immediate arrest of Gregory.

David Gregory is not above the law; he is a journalist, and must be held accountable to the same law as every other person.

DC High Capacity Ammunition Magazines - D.C. Official Code 7-2506.01 (b) No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. For the purposes of this subsection, the term large capacity ammunition feeding device means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

We The People demand that he be formally charged for violation of this law on "Meet The Press."

I admit, it's difficult to know where to begin. Let's start with MTP's use of the magazines as props. It turns out that the show's producers might make the dean's list for dumb this year. They did indeed get permission to use the props on the show, but they only got permission from the ATF, not local law enforcement, where those magazines are illegal. Stupid, but that kind of thing happens in show business, I suppose.

Now, dealing with the petition itself. It's just pickles that someone from Boise, Idaho is so whole-heartedly concerned with Metro D.C. gun laws that they need to start a petition to get the White House involved. Either that, or people are having more of those over-the-top reactions to a tragedy I mentioned earlier. Not to mention, as the linked article notes, attempting to get the Obama administration involved in any of this is simply futile.

The drive to lock Gregory up still needs about 15,000 signers, but in the mean time, let's clear this up. Although the White House could certainly apply political pressure to the D.C. government, it has no direct purview over the Metropolitan Police Department's investigations. To boot, Gregory held up the magazine as an example of the kind of ammunition used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn., and in the wake of that carnage, President Obama has moved toward making gun control a key issue in his second term. So, yeah, demanding that the White House clap David Gregory in irons is kind of dumb. Let's instead focus on the real villains, like CNN blabber Piers Morgan. A petition calling for his deportation back to the United Kingdom has garnered more than 82,000 signatures.

Now there's a petition I can get behind.

Filed Under: david gregory, free speech, guns, journalism
Companies: nra

More Post-Newtown Fallout: Gun Owners Vs. Journalists In New York

from the you-showed-them-mine-so-I'll-show-them-yours dept

The Connecticut school shooting has pushed the discussion of gun control back into the media spotlight, along with providing a convenient soapbox for lawmakers, lobbying groups and pundits willing to politicize tragedies to push their agendas through. There's been a lot of vitriol on both sides of the issue, with discussion of Second Amendment rights often leading those involved to forget all about the opposing side's First Amendment rights.

One aspect that has changed is the sheer amount of personal information available to those involved in this debate, which results in the sort of exchange that played out recently in New York. The Journal News, covering the Lower Hudson Valley, decided to post a Google map that showed the names and addresses of everyone with handgun permits in Westchester and Rockland counties. This information was gathered via a Freedom of Information requests.

Published under the fear-inducing title "The Gun Owner Next Door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood," the interactive map drew plenty of heat from gun owners who felt their personal information shouldn't have been made public. The map had the slight potential to affect criminal activity, either by steering would-be burglars to safer, weapon-free households, or to give these same hypothetical opportunists a list of addresses from which to poach guns while their owners were at work.

Also troublesome was the inference made ever so lightly by the article's title: that weapons were dangerous, and by extension, so were their owners. The timing of the article was also problematic -- and intentional. The FOIA requests went out after the Newtown shooting, skewing the purpose of the info dump even further.

A red-dotted map indicating clusters of gun owners easily, under the circumstances, continued the connect-the-dots inference: with so many weapons around, surely the non-gun owning citizens of the Lower Hudson Valley had something to fear. In totality, it was a badly timed, name-and-shame piece that painted gun owners as ticking time bombs, opening with the story of a mentally disturbed man who had put together a large cache of unregistered weapons, "without any neighbors knowing" -- something no one would have had any interest in if he hadn't used one of his guns to shoot a neighbor in the head. Quotes on both sides of the issue are scattered throughout, but the implication was clear: guns are dangerous, whether in the hands of their rightful owners, or borrowed by murderers like Adam Lanza.

The question arises as to whether the Journal News should have published this information. Clearly, the gun owners knew (or should have known) their information was a matter of public record. But should it have been used in this fashion -- or at all? Their personal information was always a FOIA request away, but does that grant a press entity the right to tie this info into an agenda-loaded piece?

The answer, of course, is that the Journal News had the right to use it in this fashion, thanks to the information being of public record and the First Amendment. The paper has received tons of criticism for this piece, and rightfully so, but that's how free speech works. The response, an info dump on anyone involved with the Journal News, spearheaded by former lawyer Christopher Fountain, is also how free speech works.

Again, publicly available information was used to compile addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Twitter/Facebook accounts, of Journal News employees, as well as various Gannett executives. Techcrunch refers to it as a "transparency arms race," granting the argument a bit of nobility it certainly hasn't earned. It's simply ugly eye-for-an-eye tactics that result in nothing more than each side of the issue becoming more firmly entrenched.

Both info dumps will have their consequences, in some form of harassment, most likely. Fountain's info dump more clearly paints the Journal News staff as villains, with the original piece leaving that on a more implicit level. Neither group involved has any true expectation of privacy, but both have claimed "victim" status. A followup post at the Journal News mentions that it has received threats along with the normal complaints, but that's something it clearly should have expected when it published a map that singled out gun owners for legal activity. (It should also be noted that the headline writers threw some slant into this post as well. The first headline, appearing at 8:39pm on Dec. 25th read "The Journal News/Lohud.com assailed for publishing map of permit holders." The newer headline, published 10:53pm, reads "Journal News' gun-owner database draws criticism.")

Fountain's response, while troubling in its own way, should also have been expected. Many people still labor under the illusion that their private lives are their own, while leaving so much exposed publicly via social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as by any number of government services. Failing that, there's always the phone book, which still publishes names and addresses of a majority of US citizens -- a service that is considered default unless the individual makes the effort to opt out.

The protections granted by the First Amendment will continue to generate ugliness that's often hard to defend. In this case, it opens a lot of people up to harassment and possible danger. People may decry "irresponsible" journalism, but if the First Amendment is to remain intact, that's going to remain a constant. The solution is always more speech, which can take many forms, many of them just as ugly as the original bit of controversial speech.

Filed Under: free speech, gun owners, guns, information, journalism, reporters, transparency

NRA: To Protect The 2nd Amendment, We Must Trample The 1st & 4th Amendments

from the well-that's-one-strategy dept

As predicted, one element of the NRA's "big announcement" today was to lash out and blame media, music and movies for violence. Most news stories are focusing on the wacky idea of putting armed guards in every school (and to do so in the next few weeks as well) and creating a database of the mentally ill, but the lashing out at video games and movies, despite no evidence that they actually lead to violence, seems equally ridiculous.

In some manner, it appears that the NRA's response is that the 2nd Amendment is more important than other amendments in the Constitution. Blaming music and movies is an attack on the 1st Amendment, which allows for freedom of expression, while turning our schools into police states, patrolled by armed guards, at least toes the line on the 4th Amendment. The database of mentally ill patients also raises significant privacy issues. No matter what you think of various gun control proposals, it seems rather ridiculous to take a strong Constitutional stand as the basis for your argument... only to make a complete mockery of other amendments.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 2nd amendment, 4th amendment, constitution, gun control, guns, media, movies, nra, privacy, video games, violence, wayne lapierre