Reply #67: Ohio law

[one-eyed fat man]

The Ohio legislature intended to restrict the dissemination of gun owners names. It only made the information accessible to Law Enforcement and to newspapers. It was not publicly available to any curious busy body or loon looking for his ex-wife.

Again the similarity to driver's licensing information. If you are a cop, you often field questions from acquaintances asking you to "run a license plate." That's a good way to get fired.

Driver's info in some states was readily available as public record. That changed when after a number of highly publicized murders were attributed to stalkers using DMV records to determine home addresses of their victims.

The Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), Public Law No. 103-322 codified as amended by Public Law 106-69, was originally enacted in 1994 to protect the privacy of personal information assembled by State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMVs).

The DPPA was passed in reaction to the a series of abuses of drivers' personal information held by government. The 1989 death of actress Rebecca Schaeffer was a prominent example of such abuse. In that case, a private investigator, hired by an obsessed fan, was able to obtain Rebecca Schaeffer's address through her California motor vehicle record. The fan used her address information to stalk and to kill her. Other incidents cited by Congress included a ring of Iowa home robbers who targeted victims by writing down the license plates of expensive cars and obtaining home address information from the State's department of motor vehicles.
...
The DPPA survived a Constitutional challenge in Reno v. Condon, 528 U.S. 141 (2000). In that case, the state of South Carolina challenged the DPPA arguing that the Act violated principles of federalism. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Act as a proper exercise of Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause. EPIC filed an amicus brief in that case that argued in part:

The Drivers Privacy Protection Act safeguards the personal information of licensed drivers from improper use or disclosure. It is a valid exercise of federal authority in that it seeks to protect a fundamental privacy interest. It restricts the activities of states only to the extent that it concerns the subsequent use or disclosure of the information in a manner unrelated to the original purpose for which the personal information was collected. The states should not impermissibly burden the right to travel by first compelling the collection of sensitive personal information and then subsequently disclosing the same information for unrelated purposes.

As for the news media, any legitimate purpose they might have would served by releasing the numbers of permit holders by city, county, zip code, age, sex, etc without naming names or listing addresses.

The newspaper editorialized against the concealed carry law. The law passed. The paper outed permit holders. Certainly to point was to punish or stigmatize, or why out them by name? You can see plenty of evidence right here by those who argue publishing the names of "slimy, evil, gun permit holders" is like listing the names and addresses of sex offenders....in the name of public safety.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...