What is the harm in publishing lists of concealed handgun license holders?
Submitted by buckeyefirearms on Thu, 06/28/2007 - 18:06. BFA News
By Ken Hanson
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So, as a service to our readers, we have prepared an example by using Sandusky Register Editor Matt H. Westerhold. We have selected him simply because the paper has pointed to him as the one "responsible" for the decision to publish the lists.
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It is very easy to determine that Mr. Westerhold has gone to pretty significant steps to insure that his own personal information is not public.
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More seriously, for the hardcore bad guy, these public records (per the Dissolution settlement) show that Matt has a pre-teen child who resides with his ex-wife. Reviewing the child support worksheet and the financial affidavits, we see that no tuition or school payments are listed, so it is a relatively high percentage bet that the child is a public school student. We see from the worksheet that mom has custody, so the child almost certainly is the residential parent for school purposes. From further public records, we see the marriage license from Mr. Westerhold’s ex-wife a year after the dissolution, and we already knew her date of birth, social security number and recent employer from the Dissolution. With very little effort we find ex-wife’s residence and now are relatively sure of which public school his pre-teen child goes to simply by checking the auditor’s maps for this residence for school districts. A check of the school website will show us the bus schedule for that particular school and that street or address, so we will almost certainly, with little effort, know which bus the child rides and what time it picks up/drops off. Further, most public libraries keep copies of the local school yearbooks in the reference section. Even if that is not the case, it is going to be fairly easy to get the yearbook and probably get a picture of the child for identification purposes.
Chilling, isn’t it?
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Attorney Ken Hanson is Buckeye Firearms Association Legislative Chair and author of The Ohio Guide to Firearm Laws.