What if the newspaper exposed your address?

Last week I was interviewed by the Huffington Post about marriage and guns. The interview was about how spouses handle it when one spouse is into guns and the other is against guns.

I’m not going to go into the interview here because awhile back I wrote an article about “How to Convince Your Spouse to Like Guns” and I’m sure you can find that article if you do a quick Google search for it.

But the reason I mention the Huffington Post is because yesterday at the very top of their website was the headline, “Targeted Anger: Staff at paper that pinpointed gun owners threatened, intimidated.” 

If you’ve been following the news lately…

Then you know that a New York newspaper, called The Journal News, released the names and addresses of over 30,000 people who were gun owners and who had their concealed carry permits. Among the names released were judges, police officers, and people in hiding from an abusive ex-spouse.

Obviously, I strongly disagree with what the newspaper did and the irony is that they’ve received so many threats they’ve had to hire armed guards for the building. The lesson to be learned from all of this is something I’ve been preaching about and doing myself for years.

Put simply, do not have the address on your driver’s license or any other mailing addresses be your home address. I know in the state of Virginia you can have a P.O. Box on your driver’s license (I used to have that) and in the state of Utah it just has to be a physical address. In other words, you can’t have a P.O. Box, but you can have a UPS Store or Mailboxes Etc. store.  

What I personally have now…

Is a UPS store on my driver’s license and then I have a series of P.O. Boxes and UPS stores for where I receive my mail. (Some are on the east coast and some are on the west coast since I do training in both locations.)

As I gun owner I think it is so important to never have your residential address revealed. This is because not only do the anti-gun people now know the address of these New York gun owners but now so do the criminals.

In fact, one of my contacts is a former Hells Angels gang member and his particular gang specialized in gun running. He told me that one of the ways they got guns was to break into people’s houses that they knew had guns.

I do realize you may have had your residential address on your license and other documents for years now, but slowly move things over to a UPS store or P.O. Box. Simply make a few calls a day to your magazine subscriptions or mortgage holder and give them the new address to start sending your mail.

This is a simple act to do and may keep you out of the public eye if your personal information should ever be released.