Ken Tingley is editor of The Post-Star in Glens Falls, N.Y., and can be reached via e-mail at tingley@poststar.com.

THE FIRST AMENDMENT HAS BEEN getting its butt kicked lately by the Second Amendment. It’s a development the Founding Fathers could not have predicted, that two rights they considered so fundamental to the original Bill of Rights would be at such odds in 21st century America.

With the advent of computer-assisted reporting, Web sites with unlimited space and the ability to access databases of government information, newspapers have been able to find new and innovative ways to perform their role as a watchdog of government.

That includes the filing of FOI requests for concealed gun permits — which has been public information in as many as 18 states — and allowing readers the opportunity to use that information as well.

Sounds like a great idea, at first, but consider the following:

As early as 2002, newspapers were putting gun permit databases on their Web sites.

The Free Lance-Star of Fredricksburg, Va., posted a database of local concealed handgun permit holders in November 2002, only to take it down after protests from guns rights groups, according to a story in The Roanoke (Va.) Times.

With newspapers all across the country developing “data pages” for their Web sites, journalists are continuing to look for databases they think their readers might be interested in using, including gun permit databases.

That has led to nothing but controversy over the past two years. Consider the following:

• Roanoke Times editorial writer Christian Trejbal wrote a Sunshine Week column in March 2007 that linked to a gun permit database in Virginia as an example of public records that were available to the public. What followed was a furor that included hundreds of calls and e-mails of protests. The Times removed the database one day after its initial posting. At one point a state police bomb squad was called to Trejbal’s home because of a suspicious package, but there was no bomb.
• The same type of reaction occurred in Nashville when The Tennessean published a similar database on its Web site in May 2007. After protests, it took down the database the same day it was posted.
• The Sandusky Register posted an Ohio gun permit database in September 2007 as a “public service to readers.” Second Amendment advocates responded angrily, and the Buckeye Firearms Association began publishing personal information about the newspaper’s Managing Editor Matt Westerhold.
• The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., put up a database of gun permit holders for each county in its state in 2006. They had about 20 complaints, and the controversy passed. They limited the personal information to the town and county where the person lives. The database is still active on the paper’s Web site although the South Dakota legislature has now closed those records.
• The Journal News in White Plains, N.Y., published an investigative story about the lack of record keeping of handgun permits in New York state. Among the flaws it found was that the state had no way to track what happens to handguns after the permit owner dies. It also published a database containing names and towns of residence. Although the online posting received protests from the communtiy, they continue to publish it.
• Even my own paper here in Glens Falls, N.Y., felt the wrath of those who feared for their Second Amendment rights when we received approximately 75 e-mails after we filed a FOI request for the gun permit database in three local counties. It was unprecedented at our newspaper to receive so many complaints without a story being published.

Each of the cases led to a public outcry that was vigorous and angry from readers who felt their Second Amendment rights were being compromised. Certainly, some of it was orchestrated by gun clubs and the National Rifle Association. But in each case, it seemed like the privacy concerns of their readership had not been thought through in great detail. Newspapers simply could not defend their actions to their readers except to cite the fact that it was public information that anyone could obtain. That didn’t seem good enough.

The Second Amendment groups said it was a safety issue. They said criminals would now have an address where they could go to steal guns.

They cited domestic violence victims who were in hiding and were now in danger of being found.

They cited law enforcement officials whose addresses were now going to be made public and could be at risk for criminals seeking revenge.

Some of it made little sense. Wouldn’t you have to be a pretty stupid criminal to target a home to burglarize because it had guns?

The Roanoke Times was apparently still stinging from the controversy almost a year later. When I asked to speak with Christian Trejbal, the editorial page writer whose column ignited the controversy there, he wrote that I had to go through a marketing person at the newspaper who responded with a previously published editorial to cite the newspaper’s position. They said the newspaper would have no other comment at this time.

When newspapers have to have mouthpieces to filter their message we may all be in trouble.

But there was uplifting news in all this.

It came from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and its investigations team headed by Investigations Editor Joe Demma, reporter Megan O’Matz and Assistant Editor/CAR John Maines.

They had seen the same type of scenario unfold at an Orlando television station that posted the database of local gun permit holders on its Web site before taking it down because of the controversy. The firestorm that followed led to proposed legislation that would close those records to the media.

"If you know anything about Florida, there’s always a lot of crime and crazy events here,” said O’Matz. “We were real concerned about guns in general and wanted to look at the issue of guns, but the gun lobby had done a pretty good job of locking up the databases."

So the Sun-Sentinel began filing its FOI requests.

But time was of the essence.

The Florida Legislature in Tallahassee was already debating a bill that would close the records before the Sun-Sentinel ever got a chance to see them.

"We got a lot of ‘We’ve never been asked for this before so we don’t know how to get it to you,’ “ said O’Matz. “So (Assistant Editor) John (Maines) has to help walk them through it. They would make us jump through a lot of hoops."

At one point the Florida Department of Law Enforcement denied the newspaper access to a database containing one-year’s worth of misdemeanor arrests saying it would cost $23 million to reproduce. The newspaper never got that one.

"This was one of the tougher ones and I’ve been doing CAR (computer assisted reporting) for 13 years” said Maines. “They certainly weren’t cooperating with us."

"They will do all kinds of things to deny you the records and hope you go away,” said O’Matz.

"Bureaucrats are the same everywhere,” said Sun-Sentinel Managing Editor Sharon Rosenhause. “Their first instinct is to say no, then someone persuades them and they see the light."

With less than a week before the Legislature was scheduled to vote on closing the records, the Sun-Sentinel needed them to see the light quickly.

Editor Earl Maucker and Rosenhause huddled with their lawyers and threatened a lawsuit.

"Our attorney said to get us the information by Friday or we will sue you,” said Maines.

"Within the next day, we had the information,” said O’Matz.

"If we chose not to sue them, we might as well pack up our bags,” said Demma.

"We take First Amendment and FOIA issues very seriously,” said Rosenhause. “I think in this case we would have sued."

With information in hand, O’Matz and Maines went to work.

O’Matz started running the names through a database of convicted felons, then other databases on jail records, domestic violence and orders of protection.

"I didn’t expect to come up with a lot of matches with felons,” said O’Matz.

Then an arrest mug shot would pop up, then another and another and another. These were licensed gun holders who were also convicted felons.

"We were told that these were supposed to be law abiding citizens and clearly they weren’t,” said O’Matz.

The Sun-Sentinel found loopholes in the laws that allowed people who violate the law to keep licenses to carry guns.

People like Robert E. Rodriguez, who was arrested 22 times between 1960 and 1998 on crimes varying from assault to trafficking of marijuana, yet he still had a legal gun permit.

People like Garth F. Bailey who was given a license to carry a gun eight years after pleading no contest to manslaughter in the shooting death of his girlfriend.

People like John M. Corporal, who was given a license to carry a gun eight years after putting a gun to the head of his roommate during an argument.

People like John P. Saxon, who was given a license to carry a gun after pleading guilty to aggravated child abuse because he slapped and choked his 4-year-old nephew for flicking the lights on and off.

The final result was more than 1,400 people who had pleaded guilty or no contest to felonies but qualified for gun permits because of a loophole in the law.

In the first story bylined by O’Matz and Maines, they said that is why Florida is often referred to as the “Gunshine State."

The four-part series was published beginning in late January 2007.

O’Matz and Maines said they maintained high standards when they got a records match and painstakingly made sure that each and every one was accurate. They suspect that the 1,400 matches they came up with is a low number.

"It is not so much that it is difficult as completely tedious,” said Maines. “I’m sure there were a thousand more we could not detect."

And the reaction?

"We knew it was going to be controversial up front because of the storm that was created in Orlando (at the TV station),” said Demma. “It just created this hurricane of anti-public information."

"We were besieged by e-mails, letters and phone calls,” said O’Matz. “They (the gun owners) were upset."

"My favorite was being called ‘winey, piney liberals,’ “ said Maines. “The reaction didn’t surprise us. We were braced for it. Anytime you go into this you are going into the hornet’s nest."

"You’d think that with the types of cases we were looking at … rapes and homicides that the gun lobby would say that like everyone else ‘We’ve got a few bad apples.’ “ said Maines. “But that’s not what they were saying."

"We got a lot of stuff online,” said Demma. “Anonymous threats, being called bleeding heart liberals and anti-gun, that type of thing."

"The funny thing is that I grew up with guns,” said Maines. “I grew up in the country and I’m not anti-gun by any means."

It wasn’t all bad news.

"There is clearly a lot of support in Florida and other states for gun ownership,” said Rosenhause. “I didn’t think this was a story that was pro or anti gun. There was a lot of people that thought what we were writing about was pretty outrageous and that some of these people shouldn’t have guns. We had prosecutors and judges who reacted affirmatively to what was revealed about the system."

The team found that of all 50 states, Mississippi and Florida were the two easiest to get gun permits.

The Sun-Sentinel also decided against printing any type of database.

"There were two schools of thought here,” said Demma. “What won out, by the time we printed the information, the database was already six months old and getting older and less relevant. It was going to be locked in there."

"We showed restraint,” said Rosenhause.

Despite the fact that the Legislature closed the records, there was good to come out of the series.

Local judges started yanking concealed weapons permits in domestic violence cases and closed the loopholes that allowed convicted felons to keep their gun permits.

A healthy debate about the gun laws and how they should be handled ensued.

And the Florida Legislature did introduce a bill this year that would make it harder for people with criminal records to get guns.

As of February, it had not yet been passed.