Doh.
Uh-oh, looks like the Republicans are in some hot water with the base again. As of very-soon-now, there's a new Republican-backed Virginia law making it illegal to disclose the names of Virginia's proud concealed-carry permit owners; you wouldn't want that information to fall into the wrong hands, after all, like media outlets who want to make public maps of it or the secret Obama-United Nations black helicopter-having army that is coming any day now to
take all those guns, just-you-wait.
Turns out, though, the only group currently seeking that list of Virginia gun owners seems to be the Republican Party itself.
Before it becomes the law of the land, Republican Party of Virginia Executive Director Anthony Ready did what he does every year. He FOIAed the name, mailing address, birth date, country of citizenship, telephone number and date of registration of every permit holder in Virginia. The only piece of information they asked to have redacted was the permit holder's Social Security Number.
This request was dated June 6, 2013 less than a month before the release of this information in this fashion will be illegal in Virginia.
The Virginia Republicans say they're only asking about that information so that they can contact those gun owners and keep them informed on issues like who might be building big scary lists of gun owners, which is freaking awesome. Apparently, though,
some gun owners are all peeved and crabby about it, and there's an effort afoot to deny the GOP's request.
Don't you wacky gun owners get it? They're only building that list so they can warn you about possible invasions of your privacy! They're the good guys, and will only use that list for scammy, overdramatic fundraising pushes defending your freedomses!
Tsk. It's getting harder and harder for the Republican Party to toe the line with their base; try to appease one group of nervous conspiracy theorists, you end up pissing off another. If only everyone wasn't worked up into such a silly lather over these things we could sit down and have a perfectly reasonable conversation about why one of the two political parties should be allowed to know the names, addresses and other personal information about every last concealed-carry gun owner in Virginia. You know, so they can warn those gun owners about how bad that would be.