Privacy or Law Enforcement? Release of Concealed Weapon Permit Names

The Missouri Highway Patrol admitted last week that it released the names of at least 163,000 concealed weapon permit holders to a federal agent investigating disability fraud, according to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a variety of other media outlets.

The news has people buzzing on every side of the gun control debate. Locally, Republican Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones of Eureka told the newspaper he was "very concerned that this may be a back-door attempt to create the Eric Holder gun registry."

The concealed weapon registry is not open to the public and Missouri law says it's a misdemeanor to disclose information about the people who hold permits.

Missouri State Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, was cited on Wednesday in the conservative blog Red State, which noted that,"questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Schaefer later met in his office with Col. Ron Replogle, superintendent of the patrol."

As it turns out, the list was on an ecrypted disc that the recipient couldn't open. The list was never read. Further, the patrol and Gov. Jay Nixon maintain that it was transmitted as part of a law enforcement investigation into fraud related to mental illness claims. That's from a report on Thursday in the Columbia Daily Tribune.

Still, gun rights advocates are alarmed about what Rolla Republican state Sen. Dan Brown called a "big breach of public trust."

Is it? Is it a breach of trust? A back-door attempt at tighter gun control? Or just a legitimate part of a law enforcement investigation that isn't worth getting excited about?

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