Logue bill would limit public information on gun permit owners

Assemblyman Dan Logue introduced a bill Wednesday to limit how much public information could be released about people with concealed weapons permits.

Co-authored by Logue, R-Loma Rica, Assembly Bill 134 would prevent addresses, phone numbers and other contact information on permit holders from being publicly available.

“The bottom line is we have some safety issues here,” said Logue, who said he was motivated to co-author the bill with Assemblyman Allan Mansoor, R-Costa Mesa, after a newspaper in New York state last month published an online map of permit holders in two counties, including their names and addresses.

“It puts a bullseye on different elements of society,” he said of the paper’s move.

But Logue said his bill’s main intent was to stop a person from getting, for example, the address of someone with a permit who the first person was stalking.

According to a fact sheet on AB 134 provided by Logue’s office, the bill would not bar law enforcement, courts or public defenders from acquiring such information.

Names of permit holders would also still be publicly available, Logue said.

A proponent for public access and media rights said he’d question whether such a law is needed.

“It sounds to me like a completely redundant bill,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of the 1st Amendment Coalition, based in San Rafael.

Scheer said he believes agencies recording concealed weapons permit data, such as county sheriff’s offices, already can restrict how much of that data they provide the public.

A better approach, Scheer said, would be to bar such information from being published online, where it’s more easily accessible to large numbers of people.

But Yuba County Sheriff Steve Durfor, who supports the bill, said he’s not aware of his office having the discretion Scheer said it might have.

“I can’t think of a legitimate reason anyone would need that information,” Durfor said.

In the last few years, he said, his department had two requests for concealed weapons permit data, but both times it was for the number of permit holders, not who they were or where they lived.

Still, if someone pressed the matter with a Public Records Act request, he said, he believes he’d have to provide more personal information.

Making such information public punishes people who are acting lawfully, Logue said.

“To do it without their permission is dangerous for them and their neighbors,” he said.

CONTACT Ben van der Meer at bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com or 749-4786. Find him on Facebook at /ADbvandermeer or on Twitter at @ADbvandermeer.