Alt-Weakly*
You’ll remember Max Brantley published a list of Arkansas handgun carry permit holders in some alt-weekly. And, by golly, if there wasn’t some uproar and then a bill proposed to make this illegal.
One would think that these reporter types might actually stop and think before doing something like this. I mean, all they’d have to do is hope on the internet and search for terms like publish handgun permits. Then they’d learn what happened in these instances and probably knock it off. But, then, that requires research and reporters don’t seem keen on that.
Anyway, the reason they do it is to generate buzz and pageviews.
* yes, it’s wrong on purpose since I have the grammar Nazis who tell me when I screw up.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I guess I don’t know what the point is. If they don’t publish the list then it might as well be inaccessible and illegal. If they do publish the list then they get the publicity and the legislature makes it inaccessible and illegal. If the state hasn’t made the data private, it seems to make pretty good business sense for the paper to publish it. Not publishing it gets them nothing.
Or as we would say, “A right not exercised….”
February 25th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Think through the business angle a little further, ka. Even the free alt-weeklies have advertisers (in fact, they are more dependent on advertisers than paid dailies, albeit not that much more).
It would not take much effort to find out, any time one of these fishwrapprers publish a CCW list (or anything else anti-gun), which of their deepest-pocketed advertisers signed on for controversy (paraphrasing David Codrea, the National Gun Rights Examiner at Examiner.com)…and which ones didn’t.
(Wolfish grin follows.)