LTE: Concealed Carry [License] holders deserve privacy

04/07/2005
(Salem Ohio) Farm and Dairy

Editor:

It defies logic that some newspaper publishers advocate listing the identities of Ohio's concealed-carry permit holders - law-abiding and honest citizens who have a license to carry a concealed weapon.

Why aren't they worried about the people carrying weapons who don''t have permits?

What they are advocating is tantamount to saying that permit holders should have a sign on their chest and back stating: "I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, so if you are going to rob me, shoot me first so I can't defend myself even if I don''t have a weapon on me right now!"

Permit holders are trained in gun safety and screened by the sheriff before they are issued a permit. In practical terms, the only people who should be concerned with honest citizens carrying weapons are criminals and law breakers.

No one outside of law enforcement people need to know which honest citizens have a permit, whether they carry a weapon or not.

Newspapers should stop wasting time and resources picking on the good people in the state and do something positive for their readers instead. Perhaps they could make a list of the criminals and law breakers around us. Their readers would be better served if they would run that list and update it weekly.

The time would be even better spent if they would go out in the community and investigate and then make a list of all the people carrying weapons who do not have a permit to carry them and publish that list also.

I have read editorials that state "government ought to operate in full view." I agree with that. But private citizens are not government. And in going with their logic, the identities of under-cover law enforcement people who carry concealed weapons should also be published.

How about off-duty cops who carry weapons? And what about plain-clothes officers who carry concealed weapons? Do they also believe they should be allowed to publish their identities as well? I don't.

Those who have qualified to possess a permit to carry a concealed weapon are not lesser citizens than those law enforcement people.

We should all have the right and the means to defend our selves against unlawful attack. Permit holders are not the enemy and they are only dangerous to those who would attack them.

Harry M. Nichols Jr.
Mineral City, Ohio