Columbia Tribune:
JEFFERSON CITY – The Missouri State Highway Patrol has twice turned over the entire list of Missouri concealed weapon permit holders to federal authorities, most recently in January, Sen. Kurt Schaefer said Wednesday.
Questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Schaefer later met in his office with Col. Ron Replogle, superintendent of the patrol.
After the meeting, he said Replogle had given him sketchy details about turning over the list, enough to raise many more questions. Testimony from Department of Revenue officials revealed that the list of 185,000 names had been put online in one instance and given to the patrol on a disc in January.
Schaefer has been investigating a new driver licensing system. He and the committee grilled the revenue officials for several hours in the morning and again at midday before they admitted the list had been copied. The investigation was triggered by fears that concealed weapons data was being shared with federal authorities.
Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential. The only place in Missouri where the names of all concealed carry permit holders is stored is among driver license records. Permit holders have a special mark on their licenses indicating they have been granted the privilege of carrying a gun.
The list was given to the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, Schaefer said he was told.
“Apparently from what I understand, they wanted to match up anyone who had a mental diagnosis or disability with also having a concealed carry license,” Schaefer said. “What I am told is there is no written request for that information.”
He said he intends to ask Replogle for full details at an appropriations committee hearing on the patrol’s budget on Thursday morning.
The patrol responded by confirming that it had shared the list of concealed weapons holders with federal authorities.
“The information was provided to law enforcement for law enforcement investigative purposes,” Capt. Tim Hull wrote in an email response to questions from the Tribune.
Ron Replogle and Tim Hull (and whoever else participated in this outrage) are criminals who broke the law, and being in law enforcement and allegedly doing something for “law enforcement purposes” doesn’t give them the right to break the law. That’s just a myth and excuse, and a bad one at that. Furthermore, they did so in order to increase the power of the totalitarians ruling the collective which lives in the hive, and so it’s especially loathsome and immoral. Sometimes laws have nothing whatsoever to do with morality, and sometimes things that are immoral are quite legal.
In this case, what these men did was both illegal and immoral, and they deserve our most sincere contempt and disgust. Opprobrium and public humiliation isn’t enough for them. These men need to be in the state penitentiary with the general prison population.
