But they don’t support the gun control legislation that provides their vindication

By Kevin E. Foley

Putnam County officials stood arm-in-arm in support of the county clerk’s refusal of a Journal News freedom-of-information request (FOIL) for gun ownership data, which at the time was clearly public information. They are also unified in their feelings of vindication after the state legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo created a new law on gun ownership, whose provisions include an opt-out section wherein individuals filing for all gun ownership permits can apply to have their personal information shielded from public view.

The new law, considered by many the strictest state gun control initiative in the country, also freezes any access to the current registration information for 120 days while state officials develop new registration forms that will require all gun owners to reapply for five-year renewable permits. This makes moot any immediate consequence of Dennis Sant’s defiant rejection of the FOIL request, a move supported by County Executive MaryEllen Odell; District Attorney Adam Levy; and Sheriff Donald B. Smith, elected officials all.

Dennis Sant, Putnam County clerk, explains his reasons for refusing to release records on gun permits. Behind him, left to right: County Executive MaryEllen Odell, State Sen. Greg Ball and Assemblyman Steve Katz (Photo by K.E. Foley)
Dennis Sant, Putnam County clerk, explains his reasons on Jan. 3 for refusing to release records on gun permits. Behind him, left to right: County Executive MaryEllen Odell, State Sen. Greg Ball and Assemblyman Steve Katz (Photo by K.E. Foley)

State Sen. Greg Ball was also a full-throated advocate for Sant’s stand and an acerbic critic of The Journal News for posting the gun permit information online after it was elicited from Rockland and Westchester, where officials readily provided the information as the-then relevant law required.

Ball also takes credit for demanding the legislature put the new proviso into the new law, which seeks, among other things, to ban the availability of a wide array of assault rifles and put limits on the ammunition loads of other weapons.

Adding to the aura of a brief battle fought and won, The Journal News, a Gannett-chain daily print and online newspaper, announced its decision to take down the interactive map it had posted with the names and addresses of registered gun owners. In a statement released on a Friday afternoon (Jan. 18) — a traditional time for government and business to release negative news — The Journal News Publisher Janet Hasson said the information had been up long enough for anyone interested to see it.

Whatever victory the county officials can lay claim to, it has the quality of a first-act development with a second act yet to come, the new state law having declared an intermission.

Although the Putnam County clerk refused to provide any information, the new law does not provide complete across-the-board protection from public scrutiny for gun owners, but it is broad in defining who is eligible to ask for it. Active and retired law enforcement members, people who served on juries, individuals under orders of protection, witnesses to crimes, and spouses, domestic partners and household members of any of the above are all eligible to opt-out. And then, in more potentially catchall criteria, applicants can assert their safety may be endangered or that they will be subject to harassment if their information is disclosed.

Given the stated attitude in Putnam County, it is hard to imagine any applicant having a problem shielding information for whatever reason upon request.

Good-government groups and media organizations have already begun to ask the state legislature to reconsider this section as overly broad and possibly setting a bad precedent for other forms of information that allow for scrutiny of government activity and performance through FOIL. The New York Times, The Albany Times-Union and The Journal News, among others, have asked for amended language, although they have tellingly not called directly for returning to complete openness of the files.

Contributing to a sense of more to come,Hasson declaredher paper “will continue to report aggressively on gun ownership. We will continue to pursue our request for data from Putnam County,” suggesting a replay of the short-circuited standoff may be yet to come, albeit many months from now.

While each new large-scale gun tragedy brings renewed calls for increased gun ownership restrictions, those same incidents have given rise to more controls on the dissemination of gun ownership data. The national trend among states is against making gun ownership records public, with only a dozen states currently making it entirely public. The New York state government has certainly moved that way in its eagerness to react to the Newtown, Conn., murders in other ways. Seen in that light, the Putnam officials’ stance, notwithstanding it was an obvious ignoring of state law at the time, was more consistent with the mainstream than some might appreciate.

Opposition to the thrust of the new state law

Nevertheless, in the aftermath of Newtown, the issue of guns and violence is certainly a far larger matter in state and national forums. The president and others raised it at Monday’s (Jan. 21) inaugural ceremony — but not in Putnam County. While protecting the personal information of gun owners caused alarm and an outspoken resolve to resist state law among all county officials, no such fulsome reaction occurred immediately after the Newtown shootings, a relative short drive from Carmel.

Governor Cuomo signs the NY SAFE Act on Jan. 15 (official photo).
Governor Cuomo signs the NY SAFE Act on Jan. 15 (official photo).

The sheriff at the time was the only county public official to act on a response to Newtown. He assembled a group of law enforcement representatives and educators to discuss security concerns and possible new police responses. While no new programs emerged from that first meeting and Smith declined when asked to discuss gun restrictions, he did use the event to underscore that such an incident could happen in Putnam County.

Sen. Ball, a Republican, has spent his considerable public-relations energy trumpeting his role in getting the information-limitation in the bill, but he voted against the legislation rather than support gun restrictions. Sen. Terry Gipson and Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, both Democrats, who unlike Ball represent Philipstown in Albany, both voted in favor of the bill.

Odell also claimed vindication on the issue but limited her praise of Cuomo and the legislature only to that provision. When she first announced her support for refusing to provide the gun ownership data, Odell took pains to say the issue had nothing to do with the Newtown deaths.

In April 2011, Odell (then a candidate for county executive) and Ball were leaders of a demonstration against the idea of Philipstown restricting bringing guns to public meetings. “This proposal in Philipstown is nothing less than government infringing upon the freedoms of law-abiding citizens. We’re tired of such attempts from the state government, and we absolutely will not stand for it at the local level,” she said at the time.

Behind The Story

Type: News

News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Foley is the former managing editor of The Current and a partner in foleymyers communications in Northampton, Massachusetts.

4 replies on “Putnam Pols Claim Victory in Gun Info Dispute”

  1. If you look at any news aggregator like Google News it’s amazing how almost every day there is another gun related tragedy. Yesterday it was a community college in Texas. What is it going to take for some real change to come to this country. How many children need to die, how many school shootings, how many mass murders in public spaces need to occur?

    The NRA is a group built to protect the interests of gun manufacturers, not people. That is most clear when their response to Newtown was to arm every teacher. What’s easier and more reasonable: Arm everyone and hope the good guys win or take away assault weapons and have one cop at each school?

    So quickly the NRA and Fox News spun this into an attack on the Second Amendment and a call for more guns. It’s sad that Greg Ball, who I agree with on most things, is helping to arm murderers of children.

    Remember what our founding fathers said about the constitution; especially its author Mr. Jefferson: “”Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.”

    He wanted us to make common sense changes every 19 years. Here’s one common sense change we should make now: No more assault weapons, armor-piercing bullets or high-capacity magazines and background checks for all gun owners, regardless of how they’re buying the gun.

  2. I agree with Mr. Anderson that the time has come to impose reasonable limits on the number and kind of guns and ammunition a civilian may keep, to make serious background checks on all buyers, and keep some kind of national registry of legally manufactured guns and ammunition as well as buyers and owners. The current position of the NRA is insane, and our elected representatives must stand up to them.

    However, it appears that at one point, not so long ago, the NRA was more interested in safety and sanity and even supported restrictions on the ownership and use of firearms.

    By the way, everyone, just because you can currently buy as many guns as you want because the NRA bought laws that say you can, it doesn’t mean that you should, or that you have to. You can choose to not buy guns. That might help.

  3. Mr. Anderson’s points are well taken, with one exception. Thomas Jefferson was neither the author of the U.S Constitution nor a delegate to the 1787 Convention in Philadelphia. (He was Minister to France, resident in Paris, during the second half of the 1780s.)

  4. You’re right! My apologies to James Madison, Goveneur Morris and the other authors. Brain freeze.

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