printIt’s old news that will not be getting old anytime soon. A shitty rag, The Journal News, published “an interactive map containing the names and addresses of pistol-permit holders in New York’s Westchester and Putnam counties.”
In response, there has been a great deal of special pleading from conservative quarters. A lot of the gun owners whose names and addresses were mapped are “first responders,” conservatives have been lamenting. “We can’t expose our [sainted] first responders to any dangers.”
The Bill or Rights was meant to protect individuals against the state. It defends the people from the government; not the obverse. But trust conservatives to elevate the “oink sector,” in the debate over the right of gun owners to privacy.
If anything, “first responders,” and other members of the oink sector—having sold their souls to the state—need to accept the risks that go with exercising ultimate decision-making powers in society, to use Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s term.
Government workers–the special interests—are expected to live with the risk of the job. They accept the perks and the pensions, don’t they?
I’m reminded here of the special pleading the same Fox News folks made in the case of the Transportation Security Administration’s illicit searches at the airports.
On Mr. Hannity’s Great American Panel, Noel Nikpour, a tedious Republican strategists who talks up a storm on that forum, extended her exquisite understanding of individual rights to … people like herself and her co-panelists. You know, important sorts who fly a lot; they ought to be able to acquire a permit that’ll exempt them from being screened afresh [by TSA goons] as they scurry to their important appointments.
This evening, Sean Hannity provided a forum for some very impressive gun owners, all of whom had been “outed” by the The Journal News. These were highly intelligent people, more than capable of articulating the essence of the freedoms they were exercising.
Still, sympathy is all “conservatives” like Mr. Hannity are able to offer to these exposed individuals. Sympathy and an appeal to the decency of the media (laughable, I know).
Republicans have no leg to stand on in objecting to the publication of gun-owner addresses, as they argue from the positive law. And the positive law, defended by all so-called “reasonable” conservatives, compels all law-abiding individuals to register with the state when purchasing a fire arm. (To this registration, libertarians like myself would object.)
Information thus collated and centralized is accessible to all.
An appeal to the sympathy and decency of the liberal establishment: That’s all statist “conservatives” have to offer in the case of The Journal News Vs. the gun owners of Westchester and Putnam counties.