After stirring up plenty of controversy (and probably a few extra page views), the Journal News has taken its map of registered area handgun owners offline.
President and publisher Jane Hasson addressed the newspaper's decision to remove the map in a letter to readers, saying it was appropriate to do so because of new gun laws in Albany that allow gun owners to keep their information from public view. "The database has been public for 27 days, and we believe those who wanted to view it have done so already," Hasson wrote. "We are not deaf to voices who have said that new rules should be set for gun permit data."
But though the Journal News says they received so many threats after releasing the map—which featured the names and addresses of registered gun owners in Westchester and Rockland Counties—that they hired an armed security detail at some of their offices, they weren't deterred by the controversy. "We know our business is a controversial one, and we do not cower," Hasson wrote in her letter. Hasson says the permit data was viewed 1.2 million times in the under-30 days it was public, and that the Journal News will continue to "report aggressively on gun ownership."
Naturally, the newspaper still has its critics. even in the wake of the map's removal. "From the beginning it was irresponsible conduct from The Journal News," Roy T. Richter, the head of the Captains Endowment Association of the NYPD, told the Times. "once you put things on the Internet, they’re stuck out there." And while names and addresses have been removed from the Journal News' map, Hasson says screenshots of the blue and red dots on the map will remain on the site, "to remind the community that guns are a fact of life we should never forget."
