A few weeks ago, I received an email from my local Sheriff’s department. They wanted to let me know that someone had requested from them information about everyone in the county with a concealed carry permit. The request was made under the Public Records Act.
Last week, I received an email from the Sheriff informing me that he decided not to turn over the information. I can’t remember if I voted for him, but I can say for certain that I’m voting for him next time.
He was able to refuse the request because it was specifically made under the Public Records Act, which provides an exemption for safety reasons.
In 2021, California passed AB-173. AB-173 stipulates that the Attorney General must permanently keep records of all information I provided to the Department of Justice when I purchased my guns and applied for my concealed carry permit.
Well, not specifically me. It applies to anyone buying guns or applying for a carry permit. The information includes, among other items, the person’s name, address, age, telephone number and fingerprints.
“Accredited”. Yeah. Right.
It further says that the information must be made available, upon request, to accredited research institutions to study the prevention of violence. It wasn’t specifically called out that they’re investigating gun violence but why else would they be requesting information on gun owners?
I should point out that anyone who’s going to study the prevention of gun violence is likely a group of left-wing nut cases. Do I want them to have my personal information? Of course not.
I’d be more concerned about this except that the State of California already gave away my information. To everybody. In 2022, there was an “unauthorized” release of the personal data of 192,000 people who applied for a concealed carry permit between 2012 and 2021. The data was available to anyone who had enough technical savvy to click on a link.
When I get a notice that my information has been detected on the Dark Web, I have to wonder if the information the scammers are using originated from the State of California.
Sooner is Better Than Later
While I’m thinking about it, I want to talk about those stupid data breach notices. Invariably, they say something like: “Early last year, we detected someone had illegally accessed our network and downloaded your information. You should keep an eye on your finances for unauthorized transactions.”
How is that going to help me? By the time I get the notice it’s pretty much irrelevant. I should be told my information has been stolen, or even if they think my information has been stolen, as soon as they have a notion that it happened. Then I can keep an eye on things. Finding out about it months or even years later is useless.
Now, back to our story…
A few weeks ago, California announced they were setting aside $50 million to fight Trump. They didn’t say specifically what they were going to fight against, just that they were sure they were going to fight against something.
Yesterday, I received a newsletter from Rob Bonta, the Attorney General of California. He bragged about how he joined nineteen other attorneys general in suing the Trump administration to stop Elon Musk and the DOGE team from accessing personal and private information maintained by the U.S. Treasury Department.
Not Looking For a Fight
Does anyone else see how ridiculous this is? This is just another example of my state’s government spending my tax dollars to fight a fight I don’t want fought. He’s against DOGE getting information kept by the U.S. Government, but he’s quite OK with giving away information kept by the State of California.
Sure, the Treasury Department has a lot of information about me. But that information is used in the aggregate and the chance that anyone will target me based on that information is close to zero.
Besides, they’re looking for billions of dollars. They’re clearly not going to find that by looking at me. And even if they were, my data would be hidden in hundreds of millions of other records.
On the other hand, someone who requests personally-identifiable information about gun owners in Ventura County California is likely looking for gun owners in Ventura County California. But they’re going to get far fewer records than DOGE wants to access.
So, my information isn’t hidden nearly as well from some left-wing anti-gun organization as it would be from DOGE.
There are tens of thousands of federal employees who have access to my personal information. Can you honestly tell me that not one of them has sold that data? Or even if they haven’t sold it, doesn’t it seem reasonable that perhaps at least one of them has accidentally released my data? I’d bet you cash money it’s happened multiple times. So why would I care if a few more people know what my Social Security number is?
It’s Only a Measly $7M
Our national debt increases by about 7 million dollars a minute. I don’t know about you, but it seems like there should be some sense of urgency to try to slow that down. I’m OK with Elon and his team accessing my data if it makes their job of digging out waste, fraud and abuse easier. And gets us results faster.
In the few minutes it’s going to take you to read or listen to this, our debt will have increased by almost $50 million. Your Liberal friends, if you have any, will tell you that Elon is moving too fast, and we need to slow down and do a bunch of studies about what will happen when we make the changes he’s suggesting. They’ll also tell you that, compared to a debt of $36 trillion, $50 million or even $50 billion is insignificant.
Sure, $50 million may be a small percentage of $36 trillion, but it’s still a lot of money.
Put the Pedal to the Metal
We can’t afford for DOGE to slow down. If anything, they should speed things up. The longer it takes for them to identify and fix waste, abuse, incompetence and corruption in our government, the more it’s going to cost us. Sure, there will be mistakes. But not any mistakes that can’t be fixed.
The Attorney General of California doesn’t care if someone gets my personal data, because he’s already given it away. The nineteen attorneys general he’s teamed up with don’t care about your data either. What they do care about is doing whatever they can to get in Trump’s way.
Besides, it’s not like your data isn’t already out there. We’ve all received numerous notifications that our data is on the Dark Web. My information has been out there for years. I struggle to see how one more time would make any difference.
This isn’t about protecting your data. This is just another ploy to stop Trump from doing what’s right for America, and stop DOGE from doing a deep dive into corruption that ultimately only benefits the Democratic party and their cronies.
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