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>it might be good to have that as context

But is this really a matter of something your neighbors need to know? Unless the person is acting irrationally, recklessly, or endangering others right in front of you, whether or not they have a gun is not more important than knowing if they have a lead pipe, a car, or a can of gas and a match. Whether or not someone has a gun in their house doesn't matter nearly as much as if they had one in their pocket.

Where it really comes through is that the police know. If the person is acting in a manner that makes you fear for you life enough to question if they own a gun, that's the point where you step out of their lives and let the police step in. I would rather not have my neighbors call the police saying "freehunter is acting odd and he has a gun!" unless I'm currently holding that gun in my hand.

Maybe instead of a map showing where gun owners live, we should have a map showing where mentally unstable people live. They're potentially dangerous with or without a firearm. A gun always needs someone to pull the trigger, a person doesn't need weapons to cause harm.

>it might be nice to know if your neighbor's owned guns

I'm sure it's nice to know for robbers as well if they knew you didn't have one. The info was always available but now the ones who don't make an honest living know this.

Would a robber actually take this information into account?

As I understand it, most prefer to do their thieving when there is nobody home, anyway.

It may be most who do it when the family is not home but not all. A story came to mind a couple of years ago where a family was murdered in Penn. during a robbery. Most families are always home in some form and some thieves have short patience when it comes to what they want. An intelligent thief would use this information like this to their advantage.

The most famous story is of the Clutter family written about by Truman Capote. I'm not sure if they had a gun but the family was home and were intended to be murdered at the time of the robbery.

This "robber" argument is incredibly FUD'ish and worth thinking through further. When we talk about gun ownership, robbers and guns we're usually discussing the fear of getting shot by a burgular. Getting robbed sucks but most of us have insurance and all of us agree it pales in comparison to getting shot.

So let's think this through:

- If a robber is robbing my house, and is armed, and we accidentally confront each other, which is my preferred state of mind? Which outcome is most likely to result in me not being shot? a) Robber believes me to not be carrying any gun per this map? b) Robber believes me to be carrying a gun (per this map?) c) Robber has no access to this information so has to assume there's a 50/50 chance I'm packing heat?

Therefore the greatest risk, if any really comes from this map, is probably the identified gun owner vs the identified non gun owner should the robber (incorrectly) conclude the gun owner is away and the non gun owner is home and needing to quickly steal electronics for instant cash to buy illegal drugs.

If I'm planning to burglarize a home, and I know that a given house has armed inhabitants, I'll probably rob the neighbors.

(Of course, if my goal is to steal an untraceable gun for later use in a crime, this map would come in very handy...)

Many home burglaries involve drug addicts who need immediate access to cash. So for those they'll first look for the empty home and then back into what to expect should they meet someone from there.

It is not FUD. If someone wants to steal a gun they now have a list of soft targets from which to choose.

It reminds me of the furor that erupted when someone used 4square and twitter APIs to create a map of homes for which the owner was traveling. Wasn't it calked rob me or something?

In that case API access was terminated because the use violated the terms of service. Creating a map to promote breakins isn't something twitter or 4square does. I can see researchers or auditors having a valid use case for obtaining a list of weapons permits but a journalist/activist who just wants to disrupt the peace? Pretty dumb decision by the local authority or more probably one motivated by the politics of some local bureaucrat wanting to "make a difference" and abusing their authority.

I think the site was http://pleaserobme.com/

It was a perfect example of TMI on the internet, but the difference I think was that people intentionally posted this information, whereas everyone listed by the paper had no choice.

Yes and I'm old enough to remember when a small but vocal % of people refused to put out automated out of office email replies because who knew who would receive them (anyone who emailed you) and what they could do to you knowing that you were away. Seems funny now but people at the time were certain it was a ticket to be robbed or worse.

> To dramatically simplify - perhaps it would be nice to have some additional context to put around the house down the street or across the way where there is ongoing issues of domestic violence/mental illness or disturbing behavior.

This map only has legal guns, so it could potentially provide a false sense of safety. Best to just assume and act as though they do have a gun.

I would hate to see a neighbor take a domestic violence situation less seriously because the internet says there isn't a gun involved.

Adam Lanza had zero history of violent behavior, and certainly didn't do anything like threaten to kill people with guns. There was no way to foresee that he was going to behave like this, which makes this even more tragic.