Yeah, this one bothers me. Not from the standpoint of having a registry of people convicted of gun offenses, but rather having it public. Criminal records are always available to law enforcement, and I think that’s as it should be. You committed a crime, you got a record. The police absolutely have to have ready access to that information.
Forcing people to maintain their addresses in the records doesn’t seem like a huge deal, either. After all, you’re supposed to do it with your driver’s license, too.
So, the idea of maintaining a gun offender registry doesn’t bother me. In fact, I think it’s necessary. It could speed up record searches and allow law enforcement in different places to get quick access to the information.
But putting it out in a public forum opens all sorts of problems. It opens up a lot of possibility for discrimination, just as the sex offender registry does. It’s remarkably easy to get on that list in some states, too, by the way. You and your partner are under 18 and you both get nailed for statutory rape, for example.
People like to look at the fact that someone is on a list, rather than the reasons they’re on that list. In many cases the reasons aren’t listed. It’s happened out here a few times where an 18 year old was nailed for sleeping with his 17 year girlfriend, and ten years later finds that his neighbors looked him up and are driving him out of the neighborhood. One guy was driven out of L.A. last year because a news anchor decided to randomly pick him from the list, go to his neighborhood and ask everyone, “Did you know there’s a sex offender living near you?” and ran with the story for a week.
Convicted pedophile aside, he became the target of a witch hunt by his neighbors. They graffitied his house, he got death threats, etc. He finally left. But where did he go? Will he ever be able to find a place that they won’t run him out? Probably not. His name’s on the list and people like looking at the list.
At that point, why ever release him from jail in the first place? Why not just kill him and be done with it? Is he still a danger? If so, why is he on the street? If not, why is he being hounded?
Oh, yeah, and there have been cases where the same thing has happened, not because someone searched a name, but because they saw an address. God forbid a sex offender should ever have lived in your apartment, or they misreported their home. If your neighbors start giving you the stink eye and hiding their children, it might not be your hygiene that’s the problem.
The same kinds of issues plague any public registry. The law may be clear on what warrants guilty and what punishment should be meted out, but the public has its own ideas.
I don’t know the laws in Baltimore, but it’s easy to get hit on misdemeanor gun charges out here. Transport your weapon incorrectly and you’ll get nailed on a gun offense.
Ultimately, I just don’t see the point in making it a public registry. If you’re going to willingly use a gun, you’re probably not going to much care what the public thinks of you, so that’s not much of a deterrent. Besides, law enforcement has your records and they’re the ones you should be worried about. With a public database, though, you have the potential of problems with the neighbors, too. And if the neighbors should find you on the list, what good is it going to do them besides freak them the hell out?
Wow. I hadn’t realized I had so much to say on the topic.
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