Perry County Gun Suit Has No Merit

Perry County has been the source of much ribbing over the years, due to its heavily rural landscape and character, as though its residents are not sufficiently "citified."

View full sizeJosh First When the county installed its first traffic light a few years ago, the jokes flew; finally, someone said, Perry County has joined the twentieth century.

The truth is that Perry County’s rugged forests and farming landscape have shaped its citizens well, and as a result they are a self-reliant, family and community-oriented, patriotic bunch.

Lots of the county is still pretty wild, and maybe so are its people a little bit, just like their frontier ancestors – you know, the ones who founded America, fought tyranny, and gave us our Republic…good people.

So jest as some might about the country folk, their happy roots run deep and plenty strong there.

And that is precisely why Perry County was recently targeted in a frivolous lawsuit, aiming straight at the heart of the community’s culture and outdoor way of life.

The lawsuit is otherwise bad policy and a waste of limited taxpayer funds. You see, the county auditors suddenly took a shot at the concealed firearm carry permits issued by Perry County Sheriff Carl Nace, seeking to uncover the names and addresses of the county’s carry permit-holders.

The legal basis of this lawsuit appears incredibly weak, because Pennsylvania statute specifically denies this information to anyone but law enforcement staff and judges on a specific need-to-know basis.

And on its face, the lawsuit seems silly; after all, the sum of money from carry permits at question is about $10,000 out of a budget in the millions, and the information isn’t actually necessary for accounting purposes.

The legal costs to Perry County taxpayers to both fund the lawsuit and, ironically, also defend themselves against it, will be several times that amount. Obviously the county auditors are guided by a matter of very confused principle, or, more likely, purposeful politics.

Their lawsuit is otherwise bad policy and a waste of limited taxpayer funds.

Several other venues and newspapers across the country have also sought the same type of information on gun owners in their regions or communities. The purpose of those efforts has always been to try to publicly expose, shame, bully, and harass legal gun owners who dare to exercise their Constitutional rights.

In these other places, these actions have had nothing to do with the law as it is, and everything to do with challenging "the gun culture" right to its face. It is a nakedly political action that would result in howls of complaint were the other nine Constitutional Amendments involved.

But because America suffers from a pointless gun prohibitionist movement that is greatly aided by a main political party, the law-abiding gun owner all too frequently finds himself in the crosshairs of a cultural war, and not a war on actual crime.

This lawsuit has suddenly and unwillingly thrust tranquil, pastoral Perry County into the political spotlight.

The county’s green farm fields are now yet another battleground for your Constitutional rights. I’m betting on the rugged residents there to prevail; their common sense always outweighs a city slicker’s political conniving.

Josh First is a businessman in Harrisburg.