Open The Records, But Limit The Access To Gatekeepers

By Kleinheider Posted on March 21, 2009 at 3:56 pm

Phil Williams struggles to find a compromise on handgun permit open records:

Of course, there are some gun-rights advocates who think no one should have access to any of that information — no how, no way — and, for them, there’s no sense even talking about compromise.

But others, like Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, have expressed an interest in finding middle ground — which is where I find myself, professionally and personally.

For years, NewsChannel 5 has obtained a database of every gun-permit holder in the state of Tennessee. But, unlike other news organizations, we never considered posting the raw data on the Internet so that people could look up their neighbors. Weighing the potential benefit versus the potential invasion of privacy, we came down on the side of privacy.

What we did, however, was to responsibly use the data to expose how state government was failing in its responsibility to protect the public.

Using that database, we matched the full names and dates of birth of the permit holders against the full names and dates of birth of convicted felons from another state database.

UPDATE: Williams takes issue with this blog posting in the comments:

Headline is extremely misleading. I never said “limit access to gatekeepers.” I just laid out what I, as a journalist, need to be able to perform the same watchdog function as I do today.

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Tags: Handgun permits, open records, Phil Williams, Ron Ramsey  

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