To the Editor: Loophole is used to harass gun owners

The following letter to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch was published on Friday, June 12.

Addressing a Senate proposal to close the media-access loophole to concealed-handgun license records, Ohio Newspaper Association Executive Director Dennis Hetzel was quoted by the Northeast Ohio Media Group as saying he couldn’t think of any instance in which Ohio journalists have used their ability to access concealed-handgun records. But he said reporters could use such access, for example, to see whether an armed robber had a concealed-carry permit.

Like Hetzel, I can’t think of a single instance in which reporters have used their access to report on whether an armed robber has a concealed-handgun license (the report would always be negative). But I easily can name many instances when journalists have used, or plotted to use, the loophole to harass law-abiding gun owners.

In 2011, the Middletown Journal used the media-access loophole to compile and publish a list of elected officials in the Buckeye state who had obtained concealed-handgun licenses. In 2012, The Journal News of White Plains, N.Y., published a map of concealed-carry permit holders and their addresses after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Just last year, I exposed a plot by newspaper conglomerate Civitas Media to use public-records requests to build state-by-state databases that list those who have the right-to-carry licenses. I could go on and on.

The media-access loophole has never been used for the purposes supporters claimed it was needed. It is time for people’s confidential records to be, once and for all, private.

CHAD D. BAUS
Secretary
Buckeye Firearms Association

The Ohio Senate has included a proposal to elimintate the media access loophole among proposed changes to the 2015-2016 biennium budget bill currently being debated in the Statehouse.