Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/117518
For the area's non-gun-owner residents, they should be aware that these maps don't show the actual existence of guns in their neighbor's house. Those who have registered their firearms by applying for a permit mostly are law-abiding citizens—their neighbors shouldn't be too worried about them. What they should be truly concerned about—dangerous assault weapons, especially those illegally acquired—aren't covered by these maps. So it's quite misleading for concerned parents to use these maps as a guide to decide whether to send their kids to their next-door neighbor for a birthday party or not due to gun-safety concerns. I also don't buy the argument, often made by local law-enforcement agencies, that these maps may encourage criminals to burglarize those households shown on the map, although I don't doubt certain criminals may be dumb enough to do so regardless of the map's existence. If I follow the logic of some passionate gun lovers, the map should deter burglary. Last, but not least, for those who have strenuously opposed these maps due to privacy concerns for the gun-permit holders, I believe there's nothing illegal or unethical about publishing these maps according to the law (at least in New York), and the public has a right to know if you own firearms, which potentially could threaten public safety. Making the Point According to the publisher of The Journal News, their original intention to publish these maps was to inform the public for the areas they're serving of the (almost ubiquitous) pervasiveness of gun ownership in their communities. Despite the limitations of the database, residents in these two New York counties, and the general public at large, were shocked by the sheer prevalence of pistol permits (quite a few mistook it as actual gun ownership). I'm not sure whether the map designer at The Journal News read Mark Monmonier's classic book, How to Lie with Maps. As a geographer, I know the shocking effects were partially achieved by the maps' cartographic design: overlapping dots. Looking closely at the pistol-permit database, a total of 44,000 people in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam—one out of every 23 adults—are licensed to own a handgun. I suspect that gun permits for a county of comparable size in Texas may be much higher. But the gun-control issue isn't a local problem in the United States. It's disheartening to think about the basic national gun facts: for a country with more than 300 million people, there are approximately 270 million privately owned guns of various types out there. That seems insane by any stretch of the imagination! For those who haven't seen the pointillist U.S. population map with more than 300 million dots (one for every person in the United States), it can be accessed at grist.org/list/insane-pointillist-map-has-341817095dots-one-for-every-person-in-the-u-s-and-canada. With a bit of cartographic manipulation, I believe this pointillist U.S. population map can be made into a surrogate national gun map with 270 million dots, each representing a privately owned firearm. I believe this map would merit the front page of The New York Times. What Can Geo Do? Like all other responsible citizens, I'm deeply saddened and outraged by the Newtown tragedy and the many shootings since then. I've been thinking about how geographers and GIScientists can weigh in via meaningful ways about the gun-control issue facing our society, and my prescription is obviously biased by my own professional background and training. In addition to passing tougher gun-control laws (e.g., the assault-weapon ban proposed by the Obama Administration) and providing better services for mental health, I strongly believe that society must deploy the latest location-tracking technologies to better track the whereabouts of dangerous weapons and people with mental disorders. Geospatial technologies also should be deployed to create early warning systems to alert the public if needed. Until recently (approximately five years ago), geospatial technologies (including, but not limited to, GPS, GIS, remote sensing, automated mapping/facilities management, location-based services, etc.) have been an arcane set of tools normally reserved for domain experts. But with ubiquitous computing and location-sensing technologies increasingly embedded in smartphones (as well as rapid development of the Internet of things), we've reached a point in human history where we can track everyone and everything on or near Earth's surface—indoors and outdoors—on a 24/7 basis. Although the benefits of such powerful tracking capabilities are enormous (e.g., disaster relief and emergency management, logistical inventories for global trade, cutting-edge research about human behavior, mobility at much finer granularities, etc.), the potential for abusing such technologies by "big and little brothers" (e.g., wiretapping/surveillance, stalking, geoslavery, geopiracy, etc.), especially the invasion of privacies, also is apparent. As reflected in controversies about the gun maps produced by The Journal News, any future deployment of geospatial technologies in the gun-control issue must be balanced with concerns for privacy and civil liberty. M A R C H 2 O 1 3 / W W W . G E O P L A C E . C O M 13