The first of these burglaries could have been coincidence, but the second may denote a trend.
Two handguns and two pistol permits were stolen from the New City home of a man whose name and address are listed on the website of a local newspaper as possessing gun permits, police said.
The thieves ransacked the house Wednesday night, breaking into two safes on the home’s third floor and stealing a third safe. The guns were in the stolen safe, police said.
Clarkstown police said they had no evidence the burglary was connected to the controversial map.
Yet.
The burglary comes less than a week after a White Plains homeowner who, too, was listed on the Journal News website as having gun permits, arrived home to find his home burglarized with jewelry missing and an attempted break-in of his gun safe. The thieves were not successful and no guns were stolen.
White Plains Police Commissioner David Chong said Monday it was “premature” to connect that burglary to the website listing but said it was part of the police investigation.
The thieves at first did not succeed, so they tried, tried again…?
There MUST be an attorney to help this group file a class action complaint against the newspaper who saw fit to publish the records of handgun permits. I can imagine some real cooperation here.
Agreed. Not only a class action suit against the paper but individual suits against the two who actually put the article together. Just wait until someone gets killed by criminals using this list.
You probably could find an attorney, but it’s my understanding that doing a class action lawsuit involving gun owners is extremely hard, because you have to find a judge friendly enough to your cause to grant class status to the plaintiffs the attorney would be representing. Out here in California, the County of Los Angeles has denied CCWs to almost everyone who isn’t a celebrity or somehow connected downtown to the political power structure. This is an open secret: anonymous people don’t get CCWs, no matter how spotless your criminal record. However, I’ve heard that NRA attorneys have tried numerous times, and the judge in each case insists that the trial go forward with a single plaintiff, so that no precedent is set.
You’d have to find a judge conservative enough to want to defend gun-owners’ rights, and anti-liberal enough to want to go after a newspaper. Good luck with that.
“One is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
Two down, one to go.
I’ve lived in Rockland County for 16 years. Before two weeks ago you want to know how many times I’d heard about strangers breaking in and taking gun safes?
Zero. Not once.
Sure, once in a while you’d hear about a stolen gun but it always turned out to be a family member on drugs or something similar. And even that was rare. Now twice in two weeks? That’s a pretty huge coincidence.
Well, the newspaper demanded their actions were freedom of speech – how’s about they learn that some speech, while free to engage in, does come with consequences.
If it can be proven that the newspapers actions resulted in endangerment and harm to the gun owners, then that newspaper and everyone connected to it should be made to pay – and pay handsomely.
What will probably be done now by the criminals is to take the stolen guns from the newspaper ID’ed homes they take when the home is empty and proceed to launch invasions of occupied homes not on the list. Much lower risk of the occupants being armed and they’re probably people who are going to be compliant.
Combination of guns being stolen from legitimate gun owners while they are not home + handy list of homes that do NOT have a means of protection = increase in crime rate.
Hope this newspaper is happy with the end result.
I wonder how the left would feel if the News Paper posted all of their addresses and names in the paper. Ya think they would feel safe I doubt it? They didn’t even consider there would be children in these homes if thieves decided they wanted their guns at any cost.
Cop’s right, it is premature. Correlation, causation, etc. Three breakins is not exactly a crime wave. I need to know how many gun owners’ homes were burglarized in this county BEFORE their addresses were published before coming to any conclusions. Police statistics, not anecdotes.