A New York newspaper has sparked an acrimonious debate over gun rights and privacy by publishing the names and addresses of thousands of handgun owners in an interactive map.
The Journal News obtained the records of residents with handgun permits under Freedom of Information laws and published them as part of the paper's coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, prompting a widespread backlash.
There have been calls for boycotts of the paper and threats to staff have been made, according to a Journal News story about the response.
In retaliation, bloggers have already published what they believe to be the home addresses of the paper's publisher, editor and the reporter who wrote the story.
None of the comments on an accompanying Facebook page viewed by Fairfax were supportive of the paper's decision to publish the database. One of the comments included the names and address of people thought to be Journal News staff.
“I grew up in Westechester [sic] I looked over the list and I am offended. Why are there so few gun owners?” wrote one reader.
“Another liberal newspaper touting rights while violating them. Anything to exploit a tragedy to support the liberal agenda. Hopefully this time next week you'll be out of business,” wrote another.
The map includes details of thousands of gun permits registered in Rockland and Westchester counties, which lie between New York City and Newtown, Connecticut, where 27 people were murdered in a primary school massacre carried out by lone gunman Adam Lanza earlier this month.
“New York residents have the right to own guns with a permit and they also have a right to access public information,” said Janet Hasson, president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group who was quoted in the story.
“We knew publication of the database would be controversial, but we felt sharing as much information as we could about gun ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings,” said CynDee Royle, editor and vice president/news.
“People are concerned about who owns guns and how many of them there are in their neighborhoods,” she said. “Our Freedom of Information request also sought specifics on how many and what types of weapons people owned. That portion of the request was denied.”
Publishing the database with an accompanying story titled The gun owner next door: What you don't know about guns in your neighbourhood, the paper explained that the reporter assigned to the story owned a registered .357 magnum.
Meanwhile the people of Sandy Hook finished burying their dead on Saturday and have begun to consider permanent memorials for those they lost, which included 20 primary school children, six school staff, the gunman's mother, Nancy Lanza, and Lanza, who killed himself.
Over the weekend residents received a recorded phone message from local officials explaining the many thousands of flowers, candles, toys and messages of love and support left at the memorials that sprang up around the town in the days after the killings would be processed into a soil to be used at a permanent memorial.
"This will be sacred soil, holding all the sweet messages and symbols of love and hope, of kindness and sadness, visions for a better future, and promises to forever remember the ones lost in this sad attack,” the message said.
"I am informing you of this tonight, so that you will be prepared to see the memorials taken away next week, and so that you will know we treasure these symbols, and will use them to honor the victims.”
Students from Sandy Hook Elementary have already returned to school, attending classes in a disused school in a neighbouring town.
Officials and contractors worked around the clock to reopen the buildings so that the children could be kept together. Signs in Sandy Hook's green and white colours were painted and in some classrooms desks were placed as they had been at Sandy Hook in order to provide some comfort to students, most of whom had vivid memories of the massacre they survived.
Sandy Hook's former principal Donna Page is coming out of retirement to help with the transition to the relocated school to the relief of parents.
The serving principal, Dawn Hochsprung, was one of the first to die, shot dead as she sought to protect her students.
